Dickensblog

Dickens and 'Westworld'

"Westworld," meet Mudfog. Lynda Clark observes at The Conversation that the fictional town Dickens created in an early set of satirical essays foreshadowed HBO's dystopian series in some interesting and surprising ways -- but also shows more of a concern for justice. (I reviewed The Mudfog Papers here.)

Dickens in 'The Big Issue'

British magazine The Big Issue has published Dickens's essay "A Walk in a Workhouse," as part of a series of Dickens's articles that they're running in conjunction with the Dickens Museum's "Restless Shadow" exhibit. 

From the book pile: 'Charles Dickens and His Circle'

As its title suggests, Lucinda Dickens Hawksley's newest book about her great-great-great-grandfather, Charles Dickens and His Circle, focuses less on the man himself than on the people around him. One might call it a biography of relationships, rather than a biography of a person. It's an interesting and helpful approach, broadening the usual picture we get of Dickens by giving a vivid portrait of his world and the people in it instead of simply retelling the major events of his life. Hawksley's preface suggests that writing her biography of Dickens's daughter Katey several years ago helped draw her attention to the different facets of her ancestor's personality and how they were brought out by his relationships: "Researching Dickens as a father -- and he was an indulgent and loving father, compared to most Victorian images of the paterfamilias -- was vastly different from studying Dickens the writer." Understanding this made Hawksley a perfect candidate to contribute a volume on Dickens to the National Portrait Gallery Companions series, all of which take a similar approach to their famous subjects (a complete list is available here).

Happy New Year!

"There must have been some few occurrences in the past year to which we can look back, with a smile of cheerful recollection, if not with a feeling of heartfelt thankfulness. And we are bound by every rule of justice and equity to give the New Year credit for being a good one, until he proves himself unworthy the confidence we repose in him."

Charles Dickens, "Scenes and Characters No. 11," Bell's Life in London

More on Dickens's 'All the Year Round' annotations

The discovery of Dickens's notes identifying various All the Year Round authors has been making headlines all over the place! Here are stories from The New York Times, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, The Telegraph, BBC News, God and the Machine -- and The Independent has more here, here, and here. The Independent also ran an essay called "What Is Sensational?" that had long been attributed to Joseph Parkinson, but is now known to have been written by Dickens himself. 

Rare Dickens program on DVD

Creative Arts Television has made avaliable a DVD of the 1958 television special "London by Dickens," starring Alan Bates, which draws from many of Dickens's lesser-known writings. Thanks to Patrick McCarthy of the Dickens Forum for the tip!

(In case you're wondering, as I was, The Pic-Nic Papers mentioned in the description is not a typo. There really was such a work.)

Merry Christmas!

"Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song, and dance, and cheerfulness. And they are welcome. Innocent and welcome be they ever held, beneath the branches of the Christmas Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow! But, as it sinks into the ground, I hear a whisper going through the leaves. 'This, in commemoration of the law of love and kindness, mercy and compassion. This, in remembrance of Me!'"

"A Christmas Tree"

I hope you've had a wonderful Christmas. As a special Christmas treat, courtesy of the Moving Image Archive, here's a 1910 film version of A Christmas Carol -- all 10 minutes and 25 seconds of it -- starring Marc McDermott as Scrooge. Enjoy!

What you might not know about Dickens and Christmas

Lauren Laverne of the Guardian has written one of the best articles I've ever seen on Dickens and Christmas (and that's saying something). She goes beyond what everyone already knows and probes some deeper Dickensian ideas about the holiday. Here's a sample:

"It’s pretty hard not to remember the dead at Christmas, but Dickens goes further. He is adamant that we should use the day to celebrate other losses, like our failures, abandoned plans and ruined relationships. In the same essay he says: 'Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy… Welcome, all that was ever real to our hearts; and for the earnestness that made you real, thanks to Heaven!' Every time I read it I wonder why we don’t do more of that. We love the idea of Scrooge’s transformation, but this kind of self-acceptance and equanimity is probably more useful to most people."

From the book pile

• Charles Dickens on Poverty, edited by Pete Orford (Hesperus, 2013).
  
  The latest entry in Orford's "Charles Dickens on . . ." series. Knowing how fiercely Dickens fought for the poor all his life, one would expect a consistently fiery tone throughout this essay collection. This turns out, surprisingly, not to be the case.
  
  The first group of essays, about the high-profile case of Bartholomew Drouet (who owned a school where more than 150 children died of cholera under "appalling conditions"), is suitably fiery -- indeed, I think it's some of the best writing Dickens ever did. But just at the end, when we learn that Drouet got off scot-free and one would expect Dickens to boil over with rage, he instead writes quietly and matter-of-factly, as if almost too weary for words anymore. The effect is far more sobering than any outraged eloquence he could have possibly come up with.  
  
  In other essays he studies different facets of poverty: the "shabby-genteel," the begging-letter writers who plague him as a known philanthropist, the tramps, residents of the workhouse, and residents of his own Urania Cottage. Sometimes he shows genuine sympathy, but any group or individual that he finds more colorful than pitiable is fair game for his wit. He goes even further with the begging-letter writers; they come in for a full share of his wrath, as he blames them for taking bread out of the mouths of the genuinely poor: "The begging-letters flying about by every post, made it perfectly manifest, that a set of lazy vagabonds were interposed between the general desire to do something to relieve the sickness and misery under which the poor were suffering, and the suffering poor themselves. . . . The writers are public robbers; and we who support them are parties to their depredations. . . . Let us give all we can; let us give more than ever. Let us do all we can; let us do more than ever. But let us give, and do, with a high purpose; not to endow the scum of the earth, to its own greater corruption, with the offals of our duty."  
  
  In his general attitude toward poverty, in fact, Dickens comes across as far more nuanced, knowing, and thoughtful than most modern writers on the subject. Which, indeed, one probably should have expected all along.

Following Dickens

"I walk because Dickens walked and in that year of reading Boz, his accounts of London by night and on foot cast a spell."

Inspired by several of Dickens's essays, especially "Night Walks," editor and journalist Laura Freeman took a few night walks of her own through London. She recounts them in this fascinating essay for the Financial Review.