Dickensblog

'Great Expectations' script available online

You can go here to read the shooting script for the 2012 feature film. Thanks to Cody for the tip!

Dickensian names: The outtakes

We've all enjoyed the colorful names that Dickens used in his books, but there are lots more that his readers never got to see. The Atlantic shares a list of them, taken from the new book Lists of Note: An Eclectic Collection Deserving of a Wider Audience, edited by Shaun Usher. I think my favorite is Verity Mawkyard -- what do you all say?

Champion of copyright

Lucinda Dickens Hawksley writes about her famous ancestor's fight to protect his rights and those of his fellow authors.

'Death and Mr. Pickwick' released today in the U.S.

Today is the U.S. release date for Stephen Jarvis's novel about Robert Seymour, Charles Dickens, and the groundbreaking work they created. The Washington Post reviews Death and Mr. Pickwick here. 

A great Dickensian dad

In Father's Day articles honoring some of the great fathers of literature, Grammarly, The Irish Times, and The Huffington Post all pay tribute to Bob Cratchit.

Dickens and tap dancing

Did you know Dickens wrote about tap? I didn't know it myself, not having read American Notes yet, but this article in the Downtown Express talks about it!

The man behind Scrooge

At Endpaper, the blog of the Paperblanks journal company, a post about "The Real-Life Inspiration behind 5 Infamous Characters" includes a blurb on John Elwes, reputed to be the original of Ebenezer Scrooge, complete with a drawing of "his Scrooge-like features."

Dickens in Ohio

Graduate student Kevin Dennis is curating the Ohio University Libraries exhibit Charles Dickens -- A Sensation: From London to Ohio. Go here and here to learn more about the exhibit.

A couple of lists

Joseph Luzzi, author of the new book In a Dark Wood, offers five recommended reads, one of which is A Tale of Two Cities: ". . . We are in Dickens Land, where story and imagination reign supreme, and where we are led onward by the most large-hearted of guides."

And here's a list from 2014 that I missed at the time: Kathryn Schulz's list of "The 5 Best Punctuation Marks in Literature." Number 4 is the colon in the first sentence of A Christmas Carol: ". . . This sentence is insane, or anyway destined to foment insanity in the grammatically prissy. It has death, a dangling participle, and a wonderfully garrulous narrator with some kind of unmentionable Victorian-era disease: wandering colon. It is great."

R.I.P. Sir Christopher Lee and Ron Moody

Lee, who died Sunday at the age of 93, played the Marquis St. Evremonde in the 1958 film of A Tale of Two Cities. And Moody, who died Thursday at age 91, was best known for creating the role of Fagin in the musical version of Oliver!, both on stage (for which he was nominated for a Tony Award), and on film (for which he won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award). 

(Images courtesy of Aveleyman and Villains Wikia, respectively)