Dickensblog

'Dickens and Prince': A review

Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius by Nick Hornby (Riverhead Books, 2022).

What do a 19th-century Victorian novelist and a 20th-century rock star have in common? More than you might expect, according to award-winning author Nick Hornby, who's devoted an entire book to the unlikely pair. 

The impetus for the book came from the 2020 release of a commemorative boxed set of Prince's 1987 album Sign o' the Times. This release -- which included a whopping 63 songs that hadn't originally made the cut -- got Hornby thinking: "Who else ever produced this much? Who else ever worked that way? It was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but then I realized there was an answer: Dickens. Dickens did. Dickens worked that way."

A visit to the gallery

A new piece at Open Culture highlights the work of Michael John Goodman, creator of the Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery, a collection of all the original illustrations from Dickens's major works.

TCM alerts

David Copperfield (1935) airs at noon Eastern today, and A Tale of Two Cities (1935) airs at 6 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday.