Dickensblog

'With kind regards'

An 1837 letter from Dickens to John Forster, presenting him with an "extra super bound" copy of The Pickwick Papers, will be auctioned off on Friday. The Daily Mail has the details and a very good photo of the letter.

Picspam: When Sherlock met Dickens, part 2

Here are the rest of Christy's Dickens/Sherlock mashups!

Picspam: When Sherlock met Dickens

We have more delightful Dickens/Sherlock mashups from Christy below the cut! Click to enlarge.

Things are getting hairy

Ian Rons of Cobham, not far from Gad's Hill Place, has won a strand of Dickens's hair. The hair, which was raffled off to raise money to help preserve Dickens's Swiss chalet, will be displayed at the Leather Bottle pub, which appears in The Pickwick Papers.

From the book pile

I've got a MESS of books to cover, so there'll be more book review posts in the coming days. The review copies never stop coming -- not that I'm complaining, mind you!

• Sketches of Young Gentlemen and Young Couples, with Sketches of Young Ladies, by Charles Dickens and Edward Caswall (reprinted by Oxford University Press, 2012).
  
  In 1837, Edward Caswall, using the same publisher and illustrator as the highly successful young Charles Dickens, had a hit with the satirical essay collection Sketches of Young Ladies, describing varying types of ladies: The Romantic Young Lady, The Mysterious Young Lady, The Matter-of-Fact Young Lady, and so forth. Six months later -- as if he weren't busy enough simultaneously writing The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist -- Dickens published an anonymous sequel to this volume, titled Sketches of Young Gentlemen. Two years later he followed it up with Sketches of Young Couples. All three volumes are offered here, with "Phiz's" original illustrations. Caswall's contribution is quite funny, but Dickens, as you might expect, digs more deeply into his characters (giving them names, expanding their amount of dialogue, and so forth) and so extracts even more amusement from them. As Paul Schlicke observes in his introduction, "The contrasts between Caswall's work and Dickens's highlight the ability of Boz to evoke the distinctiveness of a character in a few swift strokes."

Dickens serials on Kindle

Taking inspiration from Dickens, Amazon is now releasing serialized novels on Kindle -- including The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist for free. Info is here and here.

Dickens Fellowship Conference photos, part 4

Dickens characters in the windows of the Portsmouth City Council building in Guildhall Square. These are based on the Chris Riddell cartoons that ran in the Guardian.

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!

7 Quick Takes Friday

• Naxos is releasing all 16 of Dickens's major novels as audiobooks, in both abridged and unabridged versions, for the bicentennial. Visit their page for more information and to download their Dickens podcasts. And The Dabbler blog is exclusively serializing their abridged version of The Pickwick Papers.
• Actor Stephen Fry gave away free copies of A Tale of Two Cities on the set of his new film for World Book Night, earlier this week.
• Speaking of free books, the library system in Sheffield, England, is giving away 1500 free copies of Oliver Twist in honor of the bicentennial. Very nice, but since it's Sheffield, shouldn't it be David Copperfield instead? (You know, "Confusion to Brooks of Sheffield!")
• And speaking of Oliver Twist, Robin Stone of the Globe and Mail tells a terrific story about how she got both herself and her nine-year-old son hooked on the children's edition of that book. Kudos to both of them!
• Here's an interesting tale about why Dickens gave away his personal copy of David Copperfield.
• Rabbit Run Theater in Madison, Ohio, is going to be doing three different Dickens plays this summer and fall, and the nearby Lodge at Geneva-on-the-Lake is offering special packages that include overnight stays and tickets to see the performances. Read all about it here.
• Filming has started on The Invisible Woman. Can't say I'm too thrilled about seeing Dickens get the National Enquirer treatment, which is what I'm afraid this is going to be. In other movie news, the new independent film Nancy, Please tells the story of a graduate student who gets into a violent conflict with his old roommate over, of all things, a copy of Little Dorrit. Here's an interview with the director.

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.