Dickensblog

'Estella Scrooge' available online

The Streaming Musicals website has a new Christmas Carol musical. I haven't taken a look myself yet, but there are some impressive theatrical names involved, including John Caird (director of Les Miserables and Nicholas Nickleby); Paul Gordon (composer/lyricist of Jane Eyre and Daddy Long Legs), and Betsy Wolfe, whom I once saw give an inspired performance as Rosa Bud in The Mystery of Edwin Drood on Broadway. And when the synopsis says that Estella Scrooge meets up with Pip Nickleby at Harthouse in Pickwick, Ohio, you know someone knew their Dickens! Go here to find out how to buy or rent the show, and here for more information on the show itself.

'A World Full of Dickens Stories': A review

By Tai French, guest blogger

A World Full of Dickens Stories: 8 Best-Loved Classic Tales Retold for Children by Angela McAllister (Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2020)

The works of Charles Dickens, though marvelous, can be a tad daunting at first, especially for the young. With a dizzying array of characters, unfamiliar social mores and settings, and a wealth of subplots, a full-length Dickens novel can quickly overwhelm a novice or reluctant reader. Imagine how helpful a trusted guide could be, one who helps the reader keep track of the primary characters and follow the golden thread of the story through its twists and turns! A World Full of Dickens Stories is just such a faithful guide.

News roundup

Just wanted to share a few news items before beginning the book reviewing:

• The Dickens Museum is, unsurprisingly, closed indefinitely, but remains active on social media. Actor Dominic Gerrard, who has performed a one-man Christmas Carol there, has done a reading of the first chapter of A Tale of Two Cities to raise money for the Museum.
• The joint Dickens Fellowship/Dickens Society Symposium in London in July is still scheduled to go ahead, but organizers are monitoring things and will make a final decision in May.
• In the New Yorker, Amy Davidson Sorkin argues, "Esther Summerson is one of the great heroines of literature, in part because she understands the vital importance of social distancing and isolation, even when it is hard."
• Phyllis Rose is re-releasing her 1983 book Parallel Lives, which focuses on five Victorian couples, including Charles and Catherine Dickens. In an interview with the Guardian, Rose argues that "is disappointing, and incredibly small-minded" to "cancel" great writers like Dickens over their bad behavior. The new edition of her book can be ordered here.   
• The TV series "Great British Menu" has a children's literature theme this year, in honor of the 150th anniversary of Dickens's death. (Seemed like a bit of a stretch to me too, but apparently it has something to do with Oliver Twist being the first child protagonist. Anyway, I'd never carp about a show honoring Dickens for any reason!)
• Dr. Pete Orford is beginning a Hard Times readalong on April 1.

Dickens and van Gogh

Did you know that Dickens was Vincent van Gogh's favorite author? Tate Britain is getting the word out with its exhibition "Van Gogh and Britain." In its review of the exhibition, The Guardian explains, 

Van Gogh loved Dickens and Eliot for the way they took the everyday details of modest lives and elevated them into something luminous. Here was social realism, in all its unloveliness, transformed into a kind of moral grandeur. A few years later, and on his way to becoming the artist who would invest old shoes, ragged sunflowers and potato-eating peasants with powerful feeling, Van Gogh wrote to his brother: “My whole life is aimed at making the things from everyday life that Dickens describes and these artists draw.”

In fact, the paper reports, van Gogh's beloved Starry Night is said to be based on one of the most powerful scenes in Hard Times.

The Economist adds, "In a number of the paintings in 'L’Arlésienne', a series made between 1888 and 1890 . . . van Gogh carefully inscribed 'A Christmas Carol' on the spine of a book. The choice of title and author was deliberate: he had read the novel every year since childhood. When van Gogh moved back in with his parents in 1879 they complained that he did nothing but devour Charles Dickens from morning to night."

Sounds like our kind of guy!  

From the book pile

• A Christmas Corral, written and illustrated by Lucas T. Antoniak (CreateSpace/Amazon Digital Services, 2016).
  
  This picture book, based on A Christmas Carol, casts Scrooge as a surly sheep who's the bane of the barnyard. (His first name now is, of course, Ebaaanezer.) Antoniak takes quite a few liberties with the story, as you would expect, but his humorous narrative and delightful illustrations capture the spirit of the classic. My favorite part: the drawing of Tiny Tim, who sports an enormous wool Afro. Lots of fun for younger readers. 

Get 'Hard Times' in your inbox

Sorry I'm a bit late with this, but the site Journal-Lists is offering a free e-mail subscription to Hard Times in weekly installments, on the dates that it was originally published in 1854. Click here to sign up!

Useless things

Mitchell Kalpakgian has an excellent piece about Hard Times in Crisis magazine. Here's a short excerpt: "Dickens illustrates that the so-called 'useful' things of the world—facts, work, and money—ultimately prove to be useless in life’s major crises, while the 'useless' activities scorned by the utilitarians—play, friendship, charity, hope, and beauty—prove to be infinitely valuable and, ultimately, more beneficial than facts." 

The Gradgrindian vision

John Mark Reynolds (whom I know personally) has an interesting blog post up about how Dickens had a "prophetic vision of Western education: the rise of Gradgrind" in Hard Times. There are some good insights here, but I'm not sure whether I wholly agree with his remark that "Against Gradgrind, Dickens had nothing positive to say" -- meaning, I take it, that he offered no alternative vision of how education should be.

It wasn't Dickens's purpose in this novel to compare and contrast differing approaches to education. But it's worth nothing that in other books, perhaps most notably David Copperfield, he did offer portraits of good schools where pupils were inspired and encouraged by good teachers, which effectively serve as a counter to the Gradgrind idea of school.

That's my opinion, anyway. Would be interested to hear some of yours!

The Case of the Invisible Detective: Amateur female sleuths in 'Hard Times'

When people talk about early detective novels, and Dickens's influence on the genre, they usually tend to bring up Inspector Bucket of Bleak House. The Inspector has been called "the first important detective in English literature," and there's little doubt he merits the description.

But there's at least one other detective figure in Dickens's work who seems to be almost completely overlooked: Sissy Jupe in Hard Times.

I realize, of course, that Sissy is not a professional detective. But the detective canon is full of amateur sleuths, and I would argue that the humble "stroller's child" deserves to be listed among them.

(I'm going to put some major spoilers below the cut, so proceed at your own risk!)

Statistics

Msantimacassar requested a quote from Hard Times.

“‘Then Mr M’Choakumchild said he would try me once more. And he said, Here are the stutterings -- ’

“‘Statistics,’ said Louisa.

“‘Yes, Miss Louisa -- they always remind me of stutterings, and that’s another of my mistakes -- of accidents upon the sea. And I find (Mr M’Choakumchild said) that in a given time a hundred thousand persons went to sea on long voyages, and only five hundred of them were drowned or burnt to death. What is the percentage? And I said, Miss;’ here Sissy fairly sobbed as confessing with extreme contrition to her greatest error; ‘I said it was nothing.’

“‘Nothing, Sissy?’

“‘Nothing, Miss -- to the relations and friends of the people who were killed. I shall never learn,’ said Sissy.”

Chapter 9