Dickensblog

'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)

News roundup

On the eve of the 150th anniversary of Charles Dickens's death, a few items of interest:

• The Jersey Post is releasing a new set of eight stamps in honor of the occasion: "Created by Mark and Julie Wilkinson, the stamps have been designed to look like classic leather book covers and feature key scenes and characters from some of Dickens’ best-loved works." Here's the direct link to order.
• Country Life put together a lovely tribute to some of Dickens's greatest characters. Meanwhile, The Conversation did a "data analysis" to gain some insight on Dickens's methods of characterization.
• The Dickens Theatre Company, unable to perform their new play Dickens' Dream because of the lockdown, have put a short teaser video online (click "Continue reading" below to see it). Their hope is to perform the play later this year.

Hope to run into some of you at the virtual #Dickens150 conference tomorrow!

A new reproduction of the 'Oliver Twist' manuscript

SP Books has published a reproduction of the handwritten manuscript of Oliver Twist, with colored versions of George Cruikshank's illustrations and a new introduction by Simon Callow. It's a pricey but beautiful edition, especially valuable because of what it shows us about the changes Dickens made as he wrote the novel. As Craig Simpson observes in the Telegraph, "Charles Dickens’ classic work examining crime and poverty in Victorian Britain was self-censored to be less brutal about the relationship between Bill Sikes and Nancy, with offending words like 'damn' also removed from the text. . . . Callow writes that the more calm prose of the final version left 'more to the imagination', and also ironed out 'inconsistencies in the plot' after Dickens decided to make Nancy a more sympathetic character. 'Nancy would be the new, tragic heroine of the work,' Callow writes in the introduction to the book published by SP Books."

A.N. Wilson's thoughts on Dickens, and my thoughts on A.N. Wilson

British author A.N. Wilson has just released a new biography, The Mystery of Charles Dickens, in the U.K. You can find reviews of his book here, here, and here.

I don't know whether I'll read Wilson's book or not when it gets published over here, but I can say this much: If I do, I'll take it with a large grain of salt. Here's why: