Dickensblog

Charles Dickens, detective

The Murder of Patience Brooke by J. C. Briggs, published as an e-book in 2012, will be released in paperback in November. It's the first in the Charles Dickens and Superintendent Jones Investigate series, featuring Dickens as an amateur sleuth. More information can be found at the author's page. Has anyone here had a chance to read the e-version? If so, what did you think?

Dickens follows me

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The ghost of Charles Dickens follows me around.

Go Team Dickens!

If I were watching the World Cup, I'd root for Team USA -- but in the Penguin Cup, Dickens is on Team England, so I'll have to throw my support to them! Click here to read all about it.

Images of Dickensian London

The New Republic has a gallery of London sketches by Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Dore, done at the same time that Dickens was working on The Mystery of Edwin Drood. "These images," writes TNR reporter Hillary Kelly, "though criticized at their publication as exaggerated, get close to representing the darkness and sadness that Dickens too wanted to capture."

Thanks to Rachel for the tip.

The old, old fashion

Today marks the 144th anniversary of Charles Dickens's death.

"The old, old fashion! The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, old fashion -- Death!  

"Oh thank GOD, all who see it, for that older fashion yet, of Immortality!"

Dombey and Son, Chapter 16

Choose your favorite Dickensian closing sentence!

Brett Janes, who did such a nice job compiling Dickens's opening lines, has now compiled his closing lines! Go here to see them all and to vote for your favorite. (Obviously, spoilers abound, so proceed at your own risk!)

Everything he can give, and more

"His genius, then, is at one with the genius of the form of the novel itself: Dickens willed into existence the most capacious and elastic and versatile kind of novel that could be, one big enough for his vast sentimental yearnings and for every impulse and fear and hesitation in him that countervailed those yearnings too. Never parsimonious and frequently contradictory, he always gives us everything he can, everything he's planned to give, and then more."

Jonathan Lethem, Introduction to Dombey and Son (Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2003)

Dickens in Leicester

The Leicester Mercury has a photo of an 1858 advertisement for one of Dickens's readings of A Christmas Carol. Can you imagine what it would have been like to open your newspaper and see something like that?

From the book pile: Biographical edition

Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World, by Simon Callow (HarperPress, 2012).

Simon Callow, ardent Dickensian, is a professional actor as well as a writer; Charles Dickens was an enthusiastic and talented amateur actor. It was therefore only a matter of time before Callow decided to write a book about Dickens that focused on the theatrical aspects of his life. He does a very creditable job of it, extending the theater metaphor to all areas of Dickens's life without forcing it or overdoing it. Dickens was, after all, a theatrical kind of person -- the love of entertaining was so deeply ingrained in him that he seemed to live all of life on a stage of his own.

Despite his great love and admiration for Dickens, Callow is actually rather hard on him at times, making harsh judgments about his actions, thoughts, and motives, especially in his personal life. He may have been trying to rein himself in from gushing over his idol. The odd thing is that toward the end of Dickens's life, when his personal life really would justify some harshness, Callow seems to ease off. Perhaps that's because this is the era when Dickens was most involved in the theater, and Callow was so busy focusing on this, and so enjoying all the theatrical details, that he didn't care much about the personal anymore!

Callow clearly knows his stuff when it comes to Dickens, but I did catch one small but important error: He claims that, in regard to religion, Dickens "revered" Christ but "denied his divinity." As has been argued elsewhere, this is far from the truth -- so far that one wonders if Callow let a little personal bias creep in here. Nonetheless, despite occasional flaws, this is overall an excellent book with a unique perspective that makes it well worth reading.

(Review copy courtesy of the publisher.)