Dickensblog

Share your Dickens reading experiences!

Professor Michelle Allen-Emerson of the U.S. Naval Academy, as part of a research project on Dickens, is surveying readers on what their experiences with him have been like. Go here and follow the link to take the survey! 

Upcoming online talks

Tomorrow, April 27, Dr. Emily Dunbar of the Dickens Museum will give a talk on the museum's new Pickwick Papers exhibition at 10 a.m. Eastern. Go here to learn more and get a free ticket!

Also tomorrow, at 1 p.m. Eastern, the Dickens Fellowship will sponsor Lucinda Dickens Hawksley talking about her new book, Dickens and Travel. Go here for information.

Mr. Dickens comes to the museum

The Dickens Museum is hosting a virtual filmed version of Gerald Dickens's one-man show Mr. Dickens Is Coming!, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern on February 6. Go here to learn more and to buy tickets! 

New year, new reading (part 2)

Rachel, a.k.a. Sydney Wren, at All the (Dickensian) Year Round is starting a Dickens Chronological Reading Club, which aims to read through all the major works plus a few minor ones over the next two years. Go here to see the tentative reading schedule, and go here to see her initial post on the first work, Sketches by Boz. 

New year, new reading

Happy New Year! Jeremy Parrott of Dickens & Co., who's a Dickensblog reader and a member of our Facebook group, is starting 2022 right by beginning a new project, "Reading David Copperfield in Parts." Jeremy will be leading the readings on his YouTube channel, as he explains in this introduction to the project. He'll also be giving away a first edition of Bleak House, so you'll want to pay attention to find out how you can win!

The first video is below, and here's the link where you can subscribe to make sure you don't miss any upcoming ones.

 

Doings of the Dickens descendants

Mark Dickens will give a Zoom presentation on "Charles Dickens -- A Family Perspective" on Wednesday, December 1, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern. And Lucinda Dickens Hawksley will give an online talk on "Charles Dickens's Christmas Books" on Wednesday, December 8, at 1:30 p.m. Eastern. Follow the links to EventBrite for details and to purchase tickets!

Meanwhile, Gerald Dickens is back in America to present his one-man Christmas Carol! Go to his USA tour page to see if he's coming to a venue near you. If you're in the U.K., check his general tour page to see where he'll be performing once he gets back there.

A very Dickens Halloween

On Sunday at 10 p.m. Eastern, actor Dominic Gerard will perform three spooky Dickensian readings online, in an event sponsored by the Dickens Museum. Tickets are £15 per device, and a Zoom link will be sent out upon purchase. The performance is not recommended for those under 12. Go here to learn more and to buy tickets!

Upcoming Dickens conferences

Next year's Dickens Society Symposium will be hosted by the City University of London, July 8-10. Go here for more information.

Speaking of conferences, the virtual Dickens Universe begins today, with orientation at 1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Pacific. If any of you plan to be there, I look forward to seeing you via Zoom or Slack!

'Oliver Twist' in the news

Today we have a few different Oliver-related items of interest:

• The Daily Mail has some photos from the set of the new "Dodger" series, featuring Christopher Eccleston (Fagin) and Saira Choudhry (Nancy).
• The Guardian has a nice article about the Charles Dickens Museum's new Oliver Twist-themed walking tour.
• Finally, i news has an article about a couple of letters that the Museum is displaying in its new exhibit on Oliver Twist, which opened yesterday. The letters -- one written by Dickens himself, and one by his doctor -- show the toll that Dickens's public readings of the "Sikes and Nancy" episode took on his physical and emotional health.

Gerald Dickens on the Staplehurst train crash

Gerald Dickens is joining the family novel-writing business! He's working on a novel about the train crash that nearly killed his great-great-grandfather, and will be giving a talk about it on June 9, the anniversary of the crash, at Revelation Ashford in Kent. More information is here, and tickets for the talk are available here.