Dickensblog

The Drood Inquiry conference

The new Drood Inquiry group will hold a one-day conference in September, "allowing the opportunity to consider Edwin Drood afresh, not purely as a puzzle to be solved but as a work of literature to be analysed and celebrated in its own right." Cloisterham Tales has more information!

A Dickens postmark

From now until March 7, all mail sent to Portsmouth will get a postmark reading "Celebrating the birth of Charles Dickens 1812-1870." I was going to make a pun about "a man of letters," but alas, the Portsmouth News beat me to it! Thanks to The Buzfuz for the tip.

TCM alert

Great Expectations (1946) will air on TCM tomorrow (Tuesday) night, at 10 p.m ET.

Giveaway results

Congratulations to Ruth for winning the movie tie-in edition of The Invisible Woman!

Celebrating 'Two Cities'

Eva at the blog Ramblings of a Janeite is holding an "A Tale of Two Cities Week"! (Thanks to Kerry for the tip!) She's got a really great giveaway going on here. And here, she has a little survey about the book. You can put your answers in her comment section or at your own blog. I'm going to put mine right here, under the cut, because obviously you all have not heard me ramble about this book nearly enough. ;-)

'The Invisible Woman': A review and a giveaway

By Rachel McMillan, guest blogger

The Invisible Woman is a film that goes to great lengths to uncover the hidden Dickens, a Dickens unfamiliar to those who enjoy his happy endings and the moralistic brushstrokes that redeem Scrooge through Bob Cratchit’s tightly knit family.

Here, Ralph Fiennes has taken the sordid side of Dickens from Claire Tomalin’s biography of Ellen “Nelly” Ternan, and infused it into the film with no lack of passion, but a great deal of narrative depth and integrity. After the Toronto screening I saw, director/star Ralph Fiennes and his co-star Felicity Jones talked about their passion for the script as well as for the source material. The young Jones was challenged by the “meat” she found in the role.

At the same time, though, the film waded into soap opera territory: straining to find a dark side to Dickens that scholars know existed, without balancing his lesser qualities with his great talent.

TCM alert

Scrooge (1970, starring Albert Finney) will air on TCM at 3:30 p.m. ET.

Inspired by Dickens

Here's something that I'll bet you never thought would be inspired by Dickens . . . high-fashion shoes!

Dickens's baptism commemorated

Members of the Dickens Fellowship will honor the anniversary of Dickens's baptism in a special service at the Church of St. Alban in Portsmouth, on March 2. Details are here.

'Nicholas Nickleby' onstage in Orlando

The Orlando Shakespeare Theater in Orlando, Fla., has taken on the mammoth task of staging the 6 1/2-hour version of Nicholas Nickleby (cut down slightly from the 8 1/2-hour version that ran in London and New York). Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal reviews it here.