Dickensblog

TCM alert

The 1935 film of A Tale of Two Cities will air Saturday at 12 p.m. Eastern.

Merry Christmas!

"Christmas has become the most industrialized bacchanalia of the year, in which the gluttony is amped up now by the ease with which once exotic goodies are commonplace on the gourmet websites. . . . Much of the blame for initiating this is often given to Charles Dickens, mostly on the basis of one voluptuous paragraph from his magical moral fable A Christmas Carol. . . . 

"However, blaming Dickens is misleading and unfair to him.

"Dickens had not set out to write a blurb for gluttony. His idea was driven by a Christian impulse to awaken his readers to the vast social inequities of his time. Walking at night through some of London’s poorest neighborhoods he said he had composed the story in his head “weeping and laughing and weeping again” at sights of grinding poverty and stubborn spirits. The spirits he embodied in the family of the clerk Bob Cratchit and the uncaring greed in Cratchit’s employer, Ebenezer Scrooge. . . .

Dickens’s narrative genius was underpinned by an instinctive empathy for his subjects. A Christmas Carol was the most sentimental of his works. The dark actor, Scrooge, repents as few greedy men in the real world ever do. A few years on, as Dickens found success and wealth, he embraced the story’s final celebratory flourish and began his own family’s Christmas feasts with the toast right out of the mouth of Tiny Tim, Cratchit’s lame son: 'God bless us every one!'"

That's from an article by Clive Irving in The Daily Beast. I recommend reading the whole thing -- it's rather rambly but very good. I had hoped to write something for you myself on the recent spate of Dickens-related Christmas-themed cookbooks, but in truth, I just haven't had the time to do it. (Also, I'm not exactly Martha Stewart, so anything I wrote about cookbooks wouldn't be all that trustworthy.) I am on vacation the rest of the week, though, and I plan to take some time and write some Dickens-related (but non-cooking-related) book reviews for you all, so I hope that will be enjoyable. And I hope you've had a merry Christmas.

Revisiting Scrooge (and the maid!)

I'm quoted in this CBC piece by Mark Gollom about the 1951 adaptation of A Christmas Carol (a.k.a. Scrooge). Also quoted is our old friend Theresa Derrington Cozens-Hardy, who played Fred's maid and whom I interviewed for this blog several years ago! It was wonderful to hear that she's still going strong and sharing fascinating memories of the filmmaking! 

Happy 175th birthday to 'A Christmas Carol'!

The tributes and honors have been pouring in from all over! Here's a roundup:

• The Paris Review, Vox, and The Christian Science Monitor all have articles about the anniversary. BuzzFeed has a Christmas Carol quiz. BBC News offers suggestions of celebratory Dickensian food and a gin punch recipe in honor of the day.
• The Dickens Museum held an unabridged reading of the book, hosted by Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, and also asked various Dickens experts to weigh in on the question of which movie adaptation is the best. 
• The New York Public Library is hosting an exhibition on the book and also released an Insta Novel version.
• And finally, here's my own tribute.

It's lovely to see Dickens's "ghostly little book" still so loved and appreciated all these years later for all it's given us. If you've seen any tributes that I missed, please post them in the comments!

TCM alert

The 1948 version of Oliver Twist is on Wednesday night at 9:45 Eastern.

Commentating on Scrooge

I'm a guest on the latest episode of the podcast "The Commentarians," in which two people discuss a movie while watching it. In this episode, host Joe Zaragoza and I discuss the 1951 film of A Christmas Carol, a.k.a. Scrooge.You can find it on iTunes or anywhere else you get your podcasts!

Dickens in America

The Weekly Standard has a short piece on Dickens's first visit to America and the disillusionment it brought. Writer Danny Heitman does a nice job of showing of how both Dickens's cynicism and his romanticism came into play.

That time Dickens discussed religion with Mary Hogarth's spirit

Aleteia tells the story of a strange dream Dickens had during his time in Italy.

Dickens autograph sold at auction

The signature, accompanied by a quote from A Christmas Carol, brought over $23,000.

A Dickensian top ten

The Independent offers a "top ten" ranking of Dickens's novels. See what you think of their choices. There are some expected ones, but also some surprises!