Dickensblog

How to listen to 'A Tale of Two Cities'

The BBC Radio 4 production begins airing on Monday. There are two ways (that I know of) for Americans to listen:

1. Subscribe for free via iTunes, Yahoo, Zune, or Google Reader, and the podcasts will be delivered to your computer.

2. Listen via the BBC iPlayer. Each episode will be available there for a limited amount of time.

Two scenes from 'Great Expectations'

Thanks to K for passing along the links!

 

The Inimitable is inexhaustible

So says biographer Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in this interview about the upcoming adaptations.

TCM Dickens tribute, part 3

The schedule's looking especially good tonight. At 8 p.m. Eastern, we've got the 1958 Tale of Two Cities, with my favorite Carton. (And my favorite Lucie, for that matter.) That's followed at 10:15 by the musical version of Scrooge from 1970.

(Speaking of Dickens movies, here's an interview where Matthew Rhys talks a little bit about starring in the new Edwin Drood.)

The mystery of the maid

While doing some reading up on the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol (which I enjoyed very much on TCM last week), I came across an interesting debate. It seems that ever since the film came out, viewers have been falling in love with the maid who takes Scrooge's coat at Fred's house, near the end. She's onscreen for only a moment and never speaks, but her sweet face and kindly manner are captivating.

The odd thing is, no one seems to know for certain who played her.

There's an urban legend that it's a young Audrey Hepburn. I floated this idea on an Audrey Hepburn LiveJournal community I belong to, but the consensus there was that it's probably not her. I do think it looks a little like her, though. Some say it was an actress called Frances Arden, but she doesn't have an IMDb page and no one seems to know a thing about her.

Perhaps we'll never know who played the maid . . . but isn't she quintessentially, delightfully Dickensian? The mysterious, quiet, self-contained, gentle young woman who blesses the lives of all around her just by showing up -- how Dickens must have smiled over that one in heaven. (If he wasn't kicking himself for not having thought her up in the first place.)

The Dickens Bicentennial Charity Fundraiser

Earlier in the year, when we discussed ways that Dickensblog could observe the bicentennial, I think most or all of us were in agreement that the best way to celebrate our beloved author would be to help those in need, just as he spent so much of his life doing.

In that spirit, I'm very happy to announce the Dickens Bicentennial Charity Fundraiser! It will officially begin on January 1, 2012, and last all year. It's still very much in the planning stages, and I would love to hear any suggestions that any of you have to improve it. But here's the gist:

1. I've made a list of charities that either have direct ties to Dickens, or help causes that he was passionate about. That list is below. If you know of other charities that were connected with him, please let me know in the comment section, and they'll be taken into consideration.

2. If you want to participate, you'll pick the charity of your choice, set up a donation page, and enlist people to sponsor you. Or, if you'd rather, you can become a sponsor for someone else. On January 1, we'll launch a readathon. For every chapter, short story, or essay by Dickens you read in 2012, your sponsors will donate a set amount to the charity you've selected. If you think you can read a LOT of Dickens in one year -- and I'm guessing many of you can -- you'll probably want to make that a small amount, such as 25 or 50 cents per chapter. We want to raise a lot of money, but we don't want your sponsors to go broke! If you'd rather, you can make that a set amount of money per book instead. But since not everyone will be able to make it through a whole book, I thought the chapter option might be preferable for many.

3. Throughout the year, I'll be announcing more ways to raise money for your charity. For instance, for every guest post you write for Dickensblog in 2012, I'll give $5 to your charity. I may come up with other ways that people can help out around the blog during the year, to earn money. I'll also be selling certain Dickens-related items during the year, probably on Amazon or eBay, and donating the money. And there will be other fundraising activities as well.

4. It's okay if some charities get multiple donors and others don't get any. The important thing is to raise money for those in need, and even if everyone here ended up contributing to the same cause, that would still be accomplished! Also, you don't have to start on January 1; readers and sponsors can join throughout the year.

Here are the charities:

7 Quick Takes Friday

• BBC News names six things that Charles Dickens gave the modern world. A couple of them are debatable, or at least could be worded a little more carefully -- e.g., Dickens may have enjoyed white Christmases, but I don't think he had any hand in inventing them. However, on the whole it's a very interesting and thought-provoking list.
• In the New York Times, Simon Callow reviews four books about Dickens. There's a nice little sidebar piece here about Callow and his history with Dickens.
• Here are new interviews with Miriam Margolyes and Robert Webb about the Dickensian shows they're starring in. Margolyes's new book, Dickens' Women, will be released February 1. And Webb's Bleak Old Shop of Stuff debuts Monday on BBC Two.
• An audio recording of Dickens descendant and fellow novelist Monica Dickens reading A Christmas Carol has been made available for sale, with part of the proceeds going to the charity she founded. Like the performances that Gerald Dickens does (and that Charles Dickens himself did), this is a dramatic reading, rather than a word-for-word reading of the book. The recording also includes an interview with Monica.
• Speaking of audio recordings, a new collection of Dickens BBC Radio Dramas is available, briefly reviewed here. The recordings are of Oliver Twist, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. The CD set is pretty pricey, but the complete mp3 download is only $23.97.
• New reviews of the Christmas Carol-based Batman: Noel are here and here.
• Courtesy of a Brazilian site (I don't speak Portuguese, so please don't ask me to translate the text!), we have a promo picture of Matthew Rhys, Tamzin Merchant, and Freddie Fox in The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
  
  
  

Part 1 of the new 'Edwin Drood' miniseries: A review

By Amy Hoisington, guest blogger

(Please note that the review contains major spoilers.)

On Thursday, the 8th of December, I attended a preview of the first episode of The Mystery of Edwin Drood (airing on BBC2 this January) at the BFI Southbank in London. They had been previewing other BBC productions like Great Expectations and Sherlock earlier in the week.

Tweeting for treasure

If you have a Twitter account, you can enter Time Out magazine's drawing to win a boxed set of eight Dickens novels. Click here to learn how.

TCM Dickens tribute, part 2

Tonight's lineup, starting at 8 p.m. EST, features A Christmas Carol (1951), Oliver Twist (1948), Nicholas Nickleby (1947), and Great Expectations (1946).

(I know I said I'd have information about Dickensblog's bicentennial project up over the weekend. I apologize for the delay; it's taking a bit longer than I thought. Look for it shortly.)