Dickensblog

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.

From the book pile, part 1

Becoming Dickens by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011).
Rather than write a conventional biography, Douglas-Fairhurst focuses on Dickens's early years, up through 1838 and the beginning of Nicholas Nickleby, in order to explore the making of him as a man and an artist. Through Dickens's works, he traces the various forces -- his culture, his family, his education, and so forth -- that shaped his life and his voice. It's an interesting approach and works pretty well on the whole, though sometimes it leads the author to give far too much weight to trifling details. Thus, from a passing reference to a mouse that drowned in ink in Dickens's essay "Our School," we get this: ". . . The detail about drowning in black ink carried far more troubling associations. The mouse that might have achieved greater things was like a small dark shadow of the boy who might have achieved far less if his life had taken a different turn."

. . . Really? I'm all in favor of an approach that helps us remember not to take Dickens for granted, but too much of this sort of thing starts to look like pure melodrama.

But when he's not straining too hard for effects like this, Douglas-Fairhurst provides a lively and readable account of Dickens's development. In particular, his emphasis on the work (as opposed to spending the bulk of the time on the life) is the kind of thing I happen to enjoy in a biography, so I can recommend this one.

(Review copy obtained from the publisher.)

Tomorrow: A Child's Journey with Dickens by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin.

Dickens poll

The Atlantic has an online book club called 1book140, and they're planning to read a Dickens book in March. You can go here to vote for which one they should read! The choices: Bleak House, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby, and Our Mutual Friend. As I write this, Bleak House has a sizable lead, with David Copperfield in second.

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.)

Dickens onstage

A few items of theatrical news from around the world:

• Reviews of Simon Callow's Dr. Marigold and Mr. Chops are here, here, and here. Interviews with Callow are here and here.
• Speaking of Callow, Whatsonstage.com has a special members-only offer for his upcoming Christmas Carol.
• Here's an article about the Young Shakespeare Players' 10-hour production of Our Mutual Friend in Madison, Wisconsin. Dickensblog reader David gives his review here.
• Charles Dickens Ghost Stories, a play based on several short stories, is currently running in Arvada, Colorado.
• The Haunted Bride, based on a Dickens short story, is coming to Hartlepool, England.
• The full five-hour version of Nicholas Nickleby recently played in Newcastle, England. Another production is currently running in Toronto, Canada.
• Here's an interview with the author of Scrooge 2070: The Reboot, a new musical that will open next month in Palatine, Illinois.
• The musical version of A Tale of Two Cities is currently running in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A nonmusical version recently had a run in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England; a review with very spoilery remarks and pictures is here.
• Auditions are underway for a production of Barnaby Rudge in Southsea, England.
• Finally, Stageplays.com is offering 10 percent off the script of The Haunting, a play based on Dickens's ghost stories, until Monday night.

7 Quick Takes Friday

• The Morgan Library & Museum is busy putting together its Dickens bicentennial exhibit. Details are here and here.
• The Museum of London will also feature a bicentennial exhibit.
• Works by Dickens will also feature in upcoming exhibits at Australia's National Library and Tennessee's Vanderbilt University.
• Simon Callow, who has both written about and played Dickens, will play Scrooge this winter at the Arts Theatre in London. Also, in November, he will star in Dr. Marigold and Mr. Chops, based on two of Dickens's stories, at the Chichester Festival Theatre.
• The Snowlion Repertory Company in Portland, Maine, will stage a musical called The Christmas Bride, based on Dickens's story "The Battle of Life."
• Gerald Dickens will perform at the Sefton Celebrates 2011 Writing Festival. (Amusingly, the article misidentifies him as "Nicholas Nickelby.")
• The estate in Cumbria where Dickens wrote part of David Copperfield (see caption for image 5 at the link) is up for sale.

7 Quick Takes Friday

• The Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court quoted Bleak House in a ruling on the Anna Nicole Smith case. Guess Dickens has finally hit the big time, huh?
• Congratulations to UC Santa Barbara student Carmon Reynolds, whose project on Dickens won a major research award!
• In our latest installment of "Where in the world is Gerald Dickens?" the actor is bringing his one-man Nicholas Nickleby to Liverpool on Sunday.
• In an essay at PopMatters, Nathan Pensky compares HBO show The Wire with Oliver Twist.
• "Charles Dickens' favorite fair is back," reports the Telegraph's Dominic Cavendish. Click here to read about the return of the Greenwich Fair and why Dickens enjoyed it so.
• Thanks to the Jane Austen blog Austenacious for linking to us in their recent post about Dickens!
• And finally, thanks to my friend Wendy for sending along this picture from a trip to Louisville.

Make up your mind

The other day, I posted about the healing of the rift between the Dickens and Shaw families (William Shaw having been the model for Wackford Squeers), back in 1988. I may have spoken too soon.

But Sunderland-born Ted Shaw, a retired engineer, believes his ancestor was a victim of Dickens’ “sensationalist and inaccurate reporting”.

“I want to dispel this myth once and for all. My great-great-grandfather was actually a kindly man, nothing at all like Wackford Squeers,” he said.

So why is Ted Shaw president of two branches of the Dickens Fellowship? This story keeps getting stranger and stranger . . .

Scrooge's counting house saved!

The saga of the Chancery Lane counting house continues, as someone has given a private donation to it. How Dickensian! Do you suppose it was a Cheeryble brother?

7 Quick Takes Friday

• Being Dickens's friend would have had many advantages. Getting a prime rooftop spot to watch an execution may not have been one of them.
• Dickens seems to be showing up on a lot of stages lately. His ghost meets up with Edgar Allan Poe's ghost in The Completely Fictional -- Utterly True -- Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe, now running in Providence, Rhode Island . . .
• . . . And his wife shares her story of touring America with him in Paint the American Eagle, running in Philadelphia.
• Speaking of stages, for our latest installment of "Where in the World Is Gerald Dickens?": The actor and great-great-grandson of Charles is bringing his one-man version of Nicholas Nickleby to St. Helens, Merseyside, England, next week.
• Remember that student who designed the project to teach Dickens about the Kindle? It's getting quite a lot of press now.
• In his new book, The Art of Immersion, author Frank Rose uses Dickens as an example of "immersive" storytelling, because of the way serialization and reader response helped shape his stories.
• The Southwark News has a review of a pub called The Charles Dickens, which sounds like a lovely place to visit.