- A production of A Christmas Carol in Great Massingham, Norfolk County, England, raised £2,791 for East Anglia Children's Hospices. A Dickensblog Order of Merit to them for their hard work and kindness!
- A fifth-grade class in Garden City, New York, made their own movie based on A Christmas Carol.
- Linda Grant calls Bleak House a "book of a lifetime." Not a bad article, though I think she's a little off the mark in her remark about religion.
- Actor Lloyd Lee will play Dickens and several of his characters in the one-man show Educating Charlie -- Mr. Dickens Looks Back this April on the Isle of Wight.
- The Burlington (Vt.) Free Press has some interviews with the cast of a local production of Oliver! This is the first production of the show I've heard of where a girl has played the title character.
- "When theatre director Edward Lam was invited to create a piece for Hong Kong at the recent World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, a Charles Dickens novel popped up in his head." And why not?
- Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor, released as a four-volume work in the 1860s, has been re-released. The Washington Post reports, "In Mayhew one encounters the real-life equivalents of such Charles Dickens characters as Fagin, the Jewish receiver of stolen goods; Krook, the rag-and-bottle-merchant; Jo, the sickly crossing sweeper; and the Artful Dodger, leader of a band of youthful pickpockets."
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Re: the book of a lifetime article: "These arguments in critical theory [...] gave way to full-blown structuralism and destroyed any pleasure in imaginative fiction - as far as I was concerned"
Yeah. That's my thoughts about literary criticism in general.
Would you explain more about your thought that she's off the mark with the religion comment?
Posted by: Christy | January 29, 2011 at 05:07 PM
She talks about Dickens's "attacks on . . . religion." I don't think that's quite accurate. He attacked certain elements of religion as it was practiced in his day, and certain religious figures, but not, I think, religion itself.
Posted by: Gina | January 29, 2011 at 09:03 PM
Agreed, Gina. If "A Christmas Carol" and the end of "A Tale of Two Cities" is anything to go by, the I think that Dickens did believe in Christianity. I think what he disliked was the the way organized religion had so often strayed so far from the original message.
Re the story about a local production where Oliver Twist is being played by a girl. It would be quite easy to change the title to "Olivia"
Posted by: Fleur | January 30, 2011 at 09:00 AM
Ah, yes, certainly. Do agree on the religion thing.
Posted by: Christy | January 31, 2011 at 02:11 PM