Dickensblog

'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.

Dickens/Hogarth lockets on display

A pair of lockets exchanged by Charles Dickens and sister-in-law Mary Hogarth are now on display at the Dickens Museum. Follow the link to read the details and see a picture! Thanks to Tai French for the tip.

'An offering of thanks'

Algis Valiunas has an excellent article in the new issue of First Things titled "The Gospel According to Dickens" (not related to my book of a similar title!). A sample: 

Call for submissions

From Sara Malton at the Dickens Society:

"Dickens Quarterly invites submissions for a special issue on Dickens and Race. Many approaches to the topic may be envisaged, including but not limited to: representations of racial difference in Dickens’s fiction and non-fiction; Dickens’s encounters with racial difference in his personal and professional life; Dickens and slavery; Dickens, race, and empire; racially inflected or suggestive language, imagery, and allusions in Dickens’s work; the reception of Dickens’s writing within diverse racial and ethnic communities and contexts; racial difference in neo-Dickensian re-writings and adaptations of Dickens’s work for stage and screen (especially when these prompt new insights into Dickens’s own authorship); race in relation to gender and other forms of difference or othering in Dickens’s work; Dickens, race, and present-day debates about canons, curricula, and the moral and political impact of literature.

 

"Recently updated guidelines for contributors to Dickens Quarterly may be viewed here:

https://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/dickens-quarterly/contributor-guidelines-articles"

 

I got Sara to ask Dominic Rainsford, the general editor, if there was a deadline for submissions. So far, no deadline has been given. They're just going to wait and see how many pieces come in.

Dickens's door

Atlas Obscura has a fun little piece about the door and mirror that are all that's left of Dickens's stay at the Parker House Hotel in Boston.

More on the Covid 'Carols,' from 'The New York Times'

Thanks to Michael Ellis in the Facebook group for alerting me to this NYT article, which looks not just at the digital versions of the Carol that I posted about recently, but also at a number of other options that theater companies are trying: "outdoor stagings, drive-in productions, street theater, streaming video, radio plays and even a do-it-yourself kit sent by mail." The participants interviewed clearly love and respect the material and appreciate its longstanding popularity, and it's really nice to see how they're using all their creativity to bring it to audiences this year.

Keeping up with 'The Gospel in Dickens'

If you'll indulge me in some more book promoting (this is how it is when there's an author in your life! :-) ):

• Here's a lovely writeup of The Gospel in Dickens by Byron Borger of Hearts & Minds Bookstore, who will host the book's launch event on September 22. If you pre-order the book from Byron now, you can get 20 percent off. (Note: The Hearts & Minds site works a little differently from most; you order a book by typing the title and author into the space provided. But it's quite easy to do, and I can testify that the customer service is great.) 
  
  Also, five free autographed copies of the book will be given away at that event! If you sign up to attend, you'll be automatically entered in the drawing, and the winners will be announced during the event.
  
  
• I spoke with Betsy Farquhar at Redeemed Reader about the new book (along with my other new book, Dorothy and Jack: The Transforming Friendship of Dorothy L. Sayers and C.S. Lewis).

Read the foreword to 'The Gospel in Dickens'

I've got a special treat to share tonight -- Dr. Karen Swallow Prior's foreword to my upcoming book The Gospel in Dickens. Plough has made it available in their magazine and online to give you a foretaste of the book. Karen did a magnificent job, so go and enjoy it!

On Dickens's death

"No writer of the age was more beloved than Dickens. Just as people had once clamored for the next installment of his serialized novels, they now sought new details about his life and death at 58. For months, the newspaper brimmed with stories about Dickens’s final hours, his funeral, his will, the auction of his art collection, even his estate sale, where a set of old flowerpots went for a guinea.

"On June 12, The Times followed its report of Dickens’s death with a melancholy editorial tribute to the man 'whose works are more or less associated with the events of our lives,' pointing out that 'people of middle age cannot but feel that they have "grown up," as it were, with Charles Dickens. The appearance of each successive story from his pen is linked with a thousand domestic recollections, for he was eminently the novelist of the household.'"

Tina Jordan, "When Dickens Died, America Mourned. Our Archives Tell the Story," The New York Times, June 7, 2020

(Image: The Empty Chair, painting by Sir Samuel Luke Fildes, 1870)