Dickensblog

Dickens & Company

The OUPblog at Oxford University Press has an interesting new post about Dickens's frequent collaborations with other authors. Here's an excerpt: 

"In this aspect of his editorial and authorial life, Dickens was often less autocratic and bullying than scholar[s] have recognized. He wrote less than a full third of the total amount of prose and verse in the Christmas numbers, and he often didn’t get his way. Dickens printed endings he did not like under his own name, asked another person to co-write more than one frame story, allowed yet another person to decide upon the ordering of stories, and included a poem that approves of cannibalism in stark contrast to his own other published work on the subject. As often as Dickens is defensive or controlling, he is playful and self-conscious about the collaborative dynamics between himself and his contributors."

Go here for more!

A Dickens of a job

John Drew of Dickens Journals Online has a nice letter in the Guardian thanking those who helped to edit the online archives of Household Words and All the Year Round.

(From one who did a tiny bit of that work, Mr. Drew, you're very welcome!)

7 Quick Takes Friday

• If you're a U.K. resident, you could win a private tour of the Museum of London's Dickens and London exhibition. See the Guardian for details.
• Dickens Journals Online completed their project of putting all of Household Words and All the Year Round online. They're holding a launch conference at the end of March at the University of Buckingham, in conjunction with the University of Leicester.
• The site Dickens Daily is publishing all the novels serially online, one installment per day.
• PBS's Masterpiece has its Great Expectations page up.
• In a video interview with Access Hollywood, Holliday Grainger talks about filming the other Great Expectations (in which she plays Estella), and how much she enjoyed speaking her favorite line from the book.
• The Huffington Post has an interesting article about biblical references in Oliver Twist.
• Marlborough School in Falmouth came up with some fun ways of celebrating Dickens (and had to correct one child who thought Dickens invented the Muppets).

I'm a Dickens detective!

An effort is underway to edit the online editions of Household Words and All the Year Round. (I believe I posted about this once before, but I can't find the link now.) More calls for volunteers to help with the editing (or "Dickens detectives," as the Guardian called them) have gone out recently, and I signed up today! If you'd like to join the effort, go here to create an account and get your instructions.

Happy birthday, Elizabeth Gaskell

Today is the 200th birthday of the author of North and South, Wives and Daughters, Cranford, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, and many more great Victorian works. A celebration is going on around the blogosphere -- you can find a comprehensive list of links, plus a chance to win one of her audiobooks, at Jane Austen Today -- and although I didn't get signed up to participate in that, I thought Gaskell's bicentennial merited at least a brief mention here.

Why? Not just because she happens to share a birthday with your Dickensblogger (although it's nice to hear of another famous person who shares my birthday besides Jerry Lee Lewis and Madeline Kahn, whose names are always the first to come up). But also because of her sometimes contentious yet generally profitable relationship with Charles Dickens, who happened to be one of her editors. He published her work in Household Words, co-wrote works with her and other authors, commissioned her to write more Cranford stories . . . and, I'm afraid, made a rather ungentlemanly remark about her in a fit of editorial exasperation.

Still, be that as it may, I'm sure he would be near the head of the line to pay tribute to her on this momentous occasion. Let us do so in his name.