Dickensblog

Merry Christmas!

“And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”

--Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave V, "The End of It"

Another 'Scrooge' podcast

Just in case one Scrooge podcast wasn't enough for you, here's another one! On the Scrooge: A Christmas Carol podcast, host Collin Murr "will take you through a history of Charles Dickens' story on film and TV."

'A Christmas Carol' roundup

I've been too busy this month to update the blog much, and yet, as always in December, the Christmas Carol news keeps rolling in! Here's a list to get us all caught up:

• Lucinda Dickens Hawksley wrote an interesting piece for the Royal Literary Fund about her ancestor's famous Christmas story in the context of his times. 
• Will Noble at The Londonist has a piece up about the 1901 silent film Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost, and the cinematic techniques it pioneered. At the link, you can see the 3 1/2 surviving minutes of the originally six-minute film.
• In the Washington Post, Sophia Solano interviews actor Michael Russotto and his colleagues about what it was like for him to step into Olney Theatre Center's one-man Carol after Paul Morella, who had played the role since 2009, became too ill to go on. (Link is gifted.)
• In Collider, Logan Kelly writes about some of the challenges that director Brian Henson and voice actor Steve Whitmire faced in making A Muppet Christmas Carol. 
• George Petras and Jennifer Borresen have a story in USA Today exploring modern books and stories that focus on the character of Jacob Marley.

A 'bah, humbug' to Scrooge's grave

In what surely must be one of the most bizarre Christmas Carol-related crimes ever committed, the gravestone of Ebenezer Scrooge from the 1984 film adaptation was found smashed in the graveyard at St. Chad's Church in Shrewsbury, England. Does someone still bear a grudge against old Ebenezer?

(I was surprised to learn, while reading about the crime, that the stone had actually belonged to another grave before being used in the filming, with an inscription faded enough that the filmmakers were able to repurpose it. To be honest, that feels a little like a desecration too.)