Dickensblog

Dickens-thon

Rapid City, South Dakota, is celebrating the bicentennial with a marathon Dickens reading!

Update: Here's another interesting article about this.

Characters welcome

If you live in or near Rochester, England, here's a chance to get your Dickens on! Ashley Davis is organizing a Pageant of Novels to lead the parade at next month's Dickens Festival in Rochester, and he needs people to dress up as various characters. You also need to be able to do a short in-character interview. More information is here!

A quiz with a special prize

Oakham Library in Oakham, England, is hosting a Web quiz about books. If you get all the answers right, you'll be entered to win one of ten free copies of A Tale of Two Cities. (They don't say which edition.) Get all the information and download the quiz here. Note: The quiz isn't just about Dickens, it's about books from many different authors and genres.

A Dickens of a reading

ReadingEagle.com reports on the North Carolina Dickens Fellowship reading competition, focusing on high school junior Morgan Kauffman, who was a finalist with her reading from The Pickwick Papers. Morgan hopes to be able to perform at a Dickens festival in London this December. Best wishes to her!

Because one can never have too much 'A Tale of Two Cities'

. . . there's a new readthrough about to start! This one has its own blog and is sponsored by the Victorian Studies Centre and Dickens Journals Online.

Charles Dickens quiz night at Foyles

Londoners can participate in this free event next Tuesday. Get the details here!

7 Quick Takes Friday

• A "Dickens' Legacy" conference will be held tomorrow at Cambridge University.
• Simon Callow has come to terms with the fact that Shakespeare, not Dickens, will be "the chosen poster boy for British culture" during the London Olympics. (I, however, have not.)
• Portsmouth is doing special "Discover Dickens" tours in honor of the bicentennial.
• An art show in New Zealand is showing watercolors inspired by Dickens, by the artist Paul Braddon.
• Christopher Gellert, in the Washington Square News, dares to suggest that "in his day, [Dickens] might have been considered as campy as Stephanie Meyer." BITE YOUR TONGUE, SIR.
• In a more palatable comparison, the New Yorker's Maria Tatar examines the tradition of child deaths in literature, from Dickens to Stowe to The Hunger Games.
• The Gravesend Messenger reports on the new Charles Dickens Ale, created by The Leather Bottle pub that was featured in The Pickwick Papers.

At the Dickens film festival

A friend and I were at the AFI Silver Theater this morning to catch a screening of A Tale of Two Cities (1958) -- the first and, alas, the last film I'll have the chance to see in their Dickens film festival. The print could have been in better shape (I was a bit disappointed in the print quality of the Gene Kelly films I've seen there, as well.) But let me just say this . . . the only thing better than Dirk Bogarde as Sydney Carton, is larger-than-life Dirk Bogarde as Sydney Carton.

Dickens festival at Gad's Hill

The Gravesend Reporter has the details.

Easter egg hunting, Dickens style

Rockingham Castle has added a Dickensian twist to this year's Easter festivities.