Dickensblog

Steven Knight's next Dickens adaptation announced

The next Dickensian miniseries from the team behind the BBC/FX Christmas Carol will be . . . wait for it . . . Great Expectations. (It never seems to occur to anyone to give us a new Barnaby Rudge or Martin Chuzzlewit or Dombey and Son). Personally, I just hope it's a bit less grim than their previous outing. 

Oliver Twiss and Martin Guzzlewit

We've all heard of the widespread literary plagiarism and piracy in Dickens's time, but a new biography of publisher Edward Lloyd suggests that it was even more widespread than we knew. Biographer Rohan McWilliam explains, “What’s particularly interesting is that many Victorian readers may have first encountered Dickens not through his own work, but through one of these imitations. There were many titles produced, which indicate that they were incredibly popular. And in some ways the plagiarisms could be seen as the original form of fan fiction, as they took familiar characters and did different things with them.” For more on Oliver Twiss and other plagiarisms of Dickens, go here.

Recent Dickens mentions

A number of good new "books about books" have recently come out, quite a few of which offer Dickens recommendations. (I've read all the way through the first two -- with the others, I've just read the Dickens sections so far!)

• My friend Karen Swallow Prior, author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me, has a new book out called On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books, in which she uses various novels and short stories to highlight different virtues. A Tale of Two Cities illustrates the concept of justice. (I got to read an early version of the chapter and offer feedback, which was an honor and a treat!) Karen's excellent book recently was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by Publisher's Weekly.
• In I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life, Anne Bogel (who blogs at Modern Mrs. Darcy) names David Copperfield as one of the books that helped her to come of age as a reader.
• Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures & Transforming Power of a Reading Life  by Sarah Clarkson states, "There is no one quite like Dickens" and names him one of the author's "most beloved" writers. Clarkson pays tribute to David Copperfield for its striking imagery and understanding of human nature, Bleak House for its quietly faithful heroine, and Oliver Twist for its suspense. And she quotes a friend who recommends Dombey and Son and Martin Chuzzlewit. 
• James Mustich's 1,000 Books to Read before You Die: A Life-Changing List has a great chapter on Dickens. "It's as if the author has not set out to write a novel," he observes, "but has been dropped into a pulsing reality he has to write his way through, much in the way we must construct a life." Mustich specifically recommends David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, A Christmas Carol, Dombey and Son, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations.

 

The mysterious case of the misunderstood Dickens reference

In the Dickensblog Facebook group today, Herb Moskowitz and I were chatting about Poirot reading A Tale of Two Cities in the recent Murder on the Orient Express film. I pointed out something interesting that I caught when I watched it:

In the film, Poirot, as in the book, says "M. Harris will not arrive. I read my Dickens." The implication is that Harris is like Mrs. Harris in "Martin Chuzzlewit," a made-up character, and Poirot has intuited this because he is a reader of Dickens. But I think the screenwriter misinterpreted the line as "M. Harris will not arrive, so I'll just sit here and read my Dickens," and thus provided him with a Dickens novel to read!

R.I.P. Emma Chambers

The British actress, who played Charity Pecksniff in the 1994 TV adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewit, passed away last week at the age of 53.

Playlists for Dickens's characters

Hannah Paget at OUPblog came up with this fun idea! She's put together playlists for Miss Havisham, Ebenezer Scrooge, the Artful Dodger, Wilkins Micawber, and Mrs. Gamp. If you'd like to play along, you can put together your own playlist for a Dickens character here in the comments section! 

Eating with Dickens

The title of Laura Freeman's recent article in the Telegraph, "How Charles Dickens stopped me from starving myself to death," is slightly misleading. It wasn't just Dickens whose writing about food made this anorexic young woman realize that "food could be a pleasure"; it was also Siegfried Sassoon, Thomas Hardy, Marcel Proust, and several other writers. However, Dickens was one of those who played a part in her recovery, and that makes perfect sense -- he always had a special gift for writing about the simple joys and pleasures of life, and making them sound extra appealing.

In short, as Freeman puts it, "Never read Charles Dickens without a well-stocked larder. His novels can make a reader very hungry."

Is 'The Boxtrolls' Dickensian?

by Steven D. Greydanus, guest blogger

"Dickensian" is a word cropping up in reviews of the new animated film The Boxtrolls. Is The Boxtrolls "Dickensian"?

Partially. The town of Cheesebridge is full of nasty people akin to Dickens's rogue's gallery: a town full of Squeers, Quilps, Fagins, and Havishams.

But what about the other side of the ledger?

Twenty memorable characters

Clive Baugh's essay "Twenty of Dickens's Most Memorable Characters" is a couple years old, but I just now came across it, and it's so good I had to share it. In addition to his thoughtful take on characters from various Dickens's novels, there are also lots of great illustrations, many of which I'd never seen before.

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.