Dickensblog

A new Miss Havisham for 'Fitoor'

Rekha, the actress playing the Miss Havisham character in Bollywood's Great Expectations adaptation Fitoor, has quit the film and is being replaced by another actress, Tabu. NDTV Movies has details.

'Dickensian' cast list

At last, we have some real, substantial news about this show! This morning brought articles from The Telegraph, Digital Spy, TVWise, RadioTimes, The Daily Mail, and ATV Today, containing information about and interviews with the cast and writers, as well as descriptions of the sets.

Below is the cast list we have so far, including one or two names we already knew and a bunch of others:

Dickens Festival begins in Rochester

The annual Dickens Festival in Rochester (England) begins today, with an Oliver Twist theme. The Maidstone and Medway News has the details!

Doing some 'Dickensian' detective work

There've been no official Dickensian casting announcements yet, but word about casting is starting to leak out via actors' Twitter accounts. So I don't think anyone will object if I mention that Caroline Quentin is playing Mrs. Bumble, and Sophie Simnett is playing someone's niece. (Whose niece, I don't know. She looks a bit young for Scrooge's niece.) Additionally, this site lists Stephen Rae as a cast member, though with no role given.

It isn't much, but it's a start -- and I'll let you know if I find more!

Dickens in Massachusetts

The new book Dickens and Massachusetts: The Lasting Legacy of the Commonwealth Visits will be released June 4. Here's an interview with co-editor Diana Archibald.

Mystery solved!

. . . Well, sort of. Followers of The Drood Inquiry voted on their preferred ending to The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and in honor of the successful conclusion of the inquiry, the Dickens Museum is hosting an exhibition all about the book. Go here to read about the chosen ending -- and one or two wacky alternative theories!

Happy 200th birthday, Catherine Dickens!

Two hundred years ago today, on May 19, 1815, Catherine Hogarth Dickens was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Thanks to The Buzfuz for the tip!)

Of all I've read about Charles Dickens's wife and all that she went through, my favorite remains Gaynor Arnold's novel Girl in a Blue Dress. Though the story is fictionalized and the names are changed, the book is full of profound emotional and psychological truth, and pays a great tribute to this woman about whom we know so much and yet so little.

And so, in honor of her birthday, here's a passage from that book about a pivotal moment in her life:

Charles Dickens, video game star

Gamers who pre-order the upcoming game Assassin's Creed Syndicate will receive a special bonus: "The Darwin and Dickens Conspiracy Mission," in which players have to protect the two men and their work. More information is here and here. 

Charles Dickens attacked by vampires!

. . . Well, only figuratively. (But it makes a good post title, doesn't it?) I'm referring to an article by Frances Wilson in the New Statesman about "vampiric writers" -- a vampiric writer being one who "one who sinks his, or her, fangs into the flesh of another writer, and in so doing gives him or her a second life as a fictional figure." Wilson argues that Stephen Jarvis does this to Charles Dickens in his novel Death and Mr. Pickwick, accusing Jarvis of both "demonising" and "dehumanising" Dickens.

Well, I've sent for a review copy of Jarvis's novel, so we shall see . . .

The poet's view

Just when we were trying to make nice with the Trollopians. . . . Here's Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker: "Trollope is that rare thing: a strong writer with a trustworthy imagination. Dickens is a far greater sentence shaper, but his view of the world is a poet’s, painted in violent and unnatural colors."

You say that like it's a bad thing, Mr. Gopnik.