Dickensblog

Birthday festivities

Dickens's birthday is coming up, and the Dickens Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth will offer free admission to celebrate! Go here to learn more. In the meantime, Dickens fans in Philadelphia held their annual birthday bash by the Dickens statue in Clark Park. Philly Voice offers a glimpse into their hallowed tradition.  

Happy 175th birthday to 'A Christmas Carol'!

The tributes and honors have been pouring in from all over! Here's a roundup:

• The Paris Review, Vox, and The Christian Science Monitor all have articles about the anniversary. BuzzFeed has a Christmas Carol quiz. BBC News offers suggestions of celebratory Dickensian food and a gin punch recipe in honor of the day.
• The Dickens Museum held an unabridged reading of the book, hosted by Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, and also asked various Dickens experts to weigh in on the question of which movie adaptation is the best. 
• The New York Public Library is hosting an exhibition on the book and also released an Insta Novel version.
• And finally, here's my own tribute.

It's lovely to see Dickens's "ghostly little book" still so loved and appreciated all these years later for all it's given us. If you've seen any tributes that I missed, please post them in the comments!

Dickens autograph sold at auction

The signature, accompanied by a quote from A Christmas Carol, brought over $23,000.

Lost and found: Missing portrait of Dickens discovered

A man who paid a little over $30 for a bunch of junk at a sale in South Africa discovered a treasure in it: a long-lost portrait of 31-year-old Charles Dickens, painted by artist and suffragette Margaret Gillies. Art dealer and TV personality Philip Mould, who helped identify the portrait, says, “He was moments away from basically throwing away this fungus-covered picture and then he started looking at it and realised that the face was very compelling.” Mould says that the portrait "ranks among the most exciting things we have ever discovered."

The painting has been restored and had its official unveiling today at Mould's gallery, according to Dickens scholar Dr. Pete Orford, who was there. The Dickens Museum is raising money to buy it so it can be put on permanent display there.

Always check your garage sale boxes of junk carefully, folks -- you never know what might turn up!

New 'Tale of Two Cities' necklace

Etsy shop Poppet's Widgets recently held a contest to submit literary quotations to appear on new necklaces. I sent in a quote from A Tale of Two Cities, which was one of the three winners! To see the quote and to get the necklace, go here. (Special thanks for great customer service; when I had trouble using the fastener on the ball chain, they quickly sent a different chain for free!)

Lego my Dickens!

Portsmouth Historic Dockyard has commissioned five custom-designed Dickensian Lego figures -- of Dickens himself and four of his characters -- and you could win one! Go here to find out how!

If you'd like to buy the Dickens figure, he's available for sale at the designer's Etsy shop. Why he appears to be carrying a copy of the Gettysburg Address, I could not tell you, unless that was the only Lego piece available that looked like a manuscript. But he's pretty cute regardless.

Jane Austen's ring and Charles Dickens's table

You may remember that a few years ago, the British government banned a turquoise ring belonging to Jane Austen from being sold outside the country (much to Kelly Clarkson's disappointment). Now something similar appears to be going on with Charles Dickens's study table. A government press release reports, "Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism Michael Ellis has placed a temporary export bar on the William IV mahogany table to provide an opportunity to keep it in the country." It's hoped that a British buyer can be found to pay the asking price of £67,600 for the table.

NPR on Dickens

NPR's Joanne Silberner explains why Dickens's scientific legacy, explored in the Dickens Museum's current exhibition, so impressed her that she decided to give his literary works another chance!

Dickens and science

The Charles Dickens Museum is about to open a new exhibition called "Charles Dickens: Man of Science," focusing on Dickens's long-neglected interest in the subject. Museum curator Frankie Kubicki is quoted in Museum Crush as saying,"For Dickens, science mattered when it transformed lives: curing disease or cleaning streets, or opening up new vistas of wonder in a humdrum world." Smithsonian Magazine has also covered the exhibition, which will run through November 11. Thanks to Allan Raymond at the Dickensblog Facebook group for the tip!

An 'Expectations' exhbition

Artist Louise Weir has an exhibition of work inspired by Great Expectations, titled "Expectations of the Past," at the Dickens Museum through April 29. Go here to learn more about the exhibition; go here to read a brief interview with Weir and see some of the paintings in the show.