Dickensblog

A Dickens dollhouse

How adorable is this!? Eighty-two-year-old Vena Bartlett created a little dollhouse just for Dickens in honor of his 200th birthday.

"I feel like Charles is my friend now," she says.

I'm sure it would be mutual.

(Image courtesy of Portsmouth News)

Looking for a good home

Dickens's personal copy of David Copperfield is going up for auction next month. It's expected to bring between £30,000 and £50,000.

Also going on sale: a silver claret jug given by Dickens to his friend William Henry Wills.

'Page 1: Great Expectations'

Thanks to David Perdue for alerting me to this art project, which has me oddly fascinated; I keep going back to the site to stare at it, or at least at what one can see of it so far. It's available for pre-order.

Found the stamps!

There are pictures and everything!

I think they forgot something

BBC News announced the creation of six new Oliver Twist stamps.

With no pictures of the stamps.

Harrumph.

Dickens and that other writer

Just in time for Shakespeare's birthday, here's a story about how Dickens helped save his birthplace.

(Can you imagine seeing Dickens's signature in the visitor's book at Shakespeare's birthplace? An epic collision of genius!)

More new birthday editions

Overlook Press is bringing out new facsimile editions of the 1937 Nonesuch Press editions of Dickens, reports the LA Times. Six had already been published before this, and three more have just joined them. They cost a pretty penny, but they do look beautiful!

Dickens festival at Gad's Hill

The Gravesend Reporter has the details.

7 Quick Takes Friday

• I called it, I called it! Just a week and a half after I suggested watching for Dickens references on CBS's Person of Interest, they obligingly gave us one. Harold Finch rattled off the title, author, publication dates, and a one-sentence summary of Our Mutual Friend after having been drugged, a feat I'm not at all sure I could accomplish myself. Well played, sir!
• BBC Daytime has commissioned an updated adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby, to air in the fall. Instead of a boarding school, Nicholas (or "Nick") will work in a home for the elderly.
• London is doing its first Cityread, and the book they've chosen is Oliver Twist. Read all about the event here!
• As it happens, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is also featuring Oliver Twist in their One Book/One Community event. Danny Heitman of the Advocate has a nice piece about that here.
• A group of teen artists in New York has put together a special exhibit inspired by the bicentennial, called "Sketching the City."
• How's this for a prize? To raise money for the restoration of his Swiss chalet, the Rochester and Chatham Dickens Fellowship is raffling off a strand of Dickens's hair!
• Speaking of raffles, don't forget to enter ours! We don't have anything quite that cool, but we do have a copy of the Great Expectations miniseries, and your money will go to help either sick kids or human trafficking victims -- your choice.

Gad's Hill opens

. . . as the Dickens Museum closes.