Dickensblog

Lucinda Dickens Hawksley: 'You can tell in his books when he is depressed'

Dickens's great-great-great-granddaughter gives an insightful interview to Noted on his troubled marriage, his mental health, her favorite of his novels, and what her next book is going to be about.

Happy Easter!

Over at The Imaginative Conservative, Paul Krause offers an interesting Easter-ish take on A Tale of Two Cities. A sample: "Dickens does an incredible thing in intertwining two men heading to their Calvary but for different reasons. Of course, the genius of Dickens is in how this intertwining of two men being recalled to life plays itself out. . . . Darnay’s death to the law, need for replacement, and restored life only from an act of sacrifice, is a resurrection that all should be familiar with. It is easy to get wrapped up in the replacement Christ-figure that is Sydney Carton, but to do so misses a greater part of the wholeness of A Tale which mirrors the story of man’s salvation."  Read more here.

Dickens and van Gogh

Did you know that Dickens was Vincent van Gogh's favorite author? Tate Britain is getting the word out with its exhibition "Van Gogh and Britain." In its review of the exhibition, The Guardian explains, 

Van Gogh loved Dickens and Eliot for the way they took the everyday details of modest lives and elevated them into something luminous. Here was social realism, in all its unloveliness, transformed into a kind of moral grandeur. A few years later, and on his way to becoming the artist who would invest old shoes, ragged sunflowers and potato-eating peasants with powerful feeling, Van Gogh wrote to his brother: “My whole life is aimed at making the things from everyday life that Dickens describes and these artists draw.”

In fact, the paper reports, van Gogh's beloved Starry Night is said to be based on one of the most powerful scenes in Hard Times.

The Economist adds, "In a number of the paintings in 'L’Arlésienne', a series made between 1888 and 1890 . . . van Gogh carefully inscribed 'A Christmas Carol' on the spine of a book. The choice of title and author was deliberate: he had read the novel every year since childhood. When van Gogh moved back in with his parents in 1879 they complained that he did nothing but devour Charles Dickens from morning to night."

Sounds like our kind of guy!  

A closer look at the lost portrait of Dickens

As I mentioned earlier, Margaret Gillies's recently rediscovered portrait of Dickens is on display this week at the Dickens Museum. London Live has a video showing the portrait in its current surroundings and giving more background information on it.

Ten years and counting

In January, this blog hit a major milestone -- which I totally missed at the time! January 26 marked Dickensblog's 10th anniversary. Here, for those of you who haven't seen it (and those of you who have!), is our first post from January 26, 2009.

An ode to Dickens

Joseph Harrison has published a truly remarkable poem about Dickens in The New Criterion. Through vivid imagery and well-chosen details, it captures his eager and restless spirit, making him as recognizable as a painter or biographer could have. The title, "Dickens on fire," pretty much says it all! Go give it a read -- it's a little lengthy but so worth it.

TCM alert

Great Expectations (1946) will air tomorrow at 9:45 a.m. Eastern, as part of the channel's birthday tribute to director David Lean.

'Lost portrait' to go on display at Dickens Museum

The recently rediscovered Dickens portrait by Margaret Gillies will be on display at the museum April 2-7, to aid in the efforts to raise enough money to purchase it. The Guardian has more. If any of our U.K. readers stop by to see it, we'd love to hear your thoughts!

Congratulations to Miriam Margolyes!

Her audiobook version of Bleak House won the 2019 Audie Award in the Literary Fiction and Classics category. 

Famous last words

The ending of A Christmas Carol makes Ron Charles's list of "the 23 most unforgettable last sentences in fiction" in The Washington Post.