Chaplin's only novel to be released

A virtually unknown novel by Charlie Chaplin - the only book the silent film comic ever wrote - is being made public for the first time.

Footlights, which will be unveiled in London later on Tuesday, was written by Chaplin in 1948 and later transformed into his film Limelight, in which a washed-out clown saves a dancer from suicide.

The book is being published in English by the Cineteca di Bologna, an Italian film restoration institute that has been working with Chaplin biographer David Robinson on reconstructing drafts found in the Chaplin archives.

Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in London in 1889 to poor parents, who struggled to make a living as music hall entertainers.

As an adolescent, he began working in music halls in Soho, before eventually becoming an actor with a theatre troupe, and making his silver screen debut in 1914.

According to Robinson, the relationship between drunken clown and desperate ballerina in the much later Footlights was likely inspired by his meeting with legendary Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky in 1916.

The Cineteca describes Chaplin's "vivid, idiosyncratic" writing style which, "unadulterated by editors, moves freely from the baldly colloquial to moments of rich imagery and Dickensian description".

The book is illustrated with previously unpublished documents and photographs from the Chaplin archives, as well as pictures of the theatrical world of Chaplin's youth and images from the author's private collection.