Dickensblog

Dickens on the Isle of Wight

A new short film, "Dickens Island," celebrates Charles Dickens's connection with the Isle of Wight and explores how it may have helped inspire some of his work. The film, directed by Jamie Langton, was inspired by the upcoming 175th anniversary of the Dickens family's summer stay on the island in 1849. Among those interviewed for the film is artist Ian Dickens, the author's great-great-grandson, who lives there today. Go here to read more, and click on the video below to watch the film in its entirety!

Thirty years of 'A Christmas Carol'

Gerald Dickens is celebrating a milestone anniversary -- he's been performing his great-great-grandfather's A Christmas Carol for 30 years now! In a new interview, he tells the Powys County Times why this work translates so well to the stage.

'Charles Dickens and Georgina Hogarth': A review

Charles Dickens and Georgina Hogarth: A curious and enduring relationship by Christine Skelton (Manchester University Press, 2023)

Of all the unanswered questions and ongoing disputes about Charles Dickens's life, one of the most intriguing is this: When Charles and his wife, Catherine, separated, why did Catherine's sister Georgina, who had been living with them for years, stay with Charles? Christine Skelton of the University of Birmingham attempts to answer that question with her new book exploring the connection between the novelist and his mysterious sister-in-law. In some ways she's able to throw light on it, but in other ways, it feels as if the mystery's only deepened.

When Dickens crossed the bar

Today marks the 153rd anniversary of Charles Dickens's death. His daughter Mamie later wrote of it in her book, My Father As I Recall Him: 

"The room in which my dear father reposed for the last time was bright with the beautiful fresh flowers which were so abundant at this time of the year, and which our good neighbours sent to us so frequently.  The birds were singing all about and the summer sun shone brilliantly.

'And may there be no sadness of farewell
         When I embark.
For though when from out our bourne of Time and Place
         The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
         When I have crossed the bar.’

"Those exquisite lines of Lord Tennyson’s seem so appropriate to my father, to his dread of good-byes, to his great and simple faith, that I have ventured to quote them here."

Dickens on British TV

Acclaimed actress Miriam Margolyes is not a fan of Christmas, but she is famously a fan of Dickens. So she "has agreed to see if she can warm to the season through her love of Charles Dickens," in a Channel 4 special called "Miriam's Dickensian Christmas." The special airs Tuesday night, and Margolyes talks about it here. Lucinda Dickens Hawksley also worked on the special, and she discusses it here.

In other British television news, Mark Gatiss's filmed stage production of A Christmas Carol, which was recently in cinemas, will air on BBC Four (and BBC iPlayer) on Christmas Day.

Dickens the intrepid traveler

Lucinda Hawksley gave a nice long interview to The Sunday Post to promote her newest book about her great-great-great-grandfather, Dickens and Travel: The Start of Modern Travel Writing. Here's an excerpt:

“The first trip on a steamship ... sounds absolutely terrifying. Dickens writes home and says that never again would he trust himself and his wife to a steamship, because it’s so frightening.

“It’s either far too heavily laden with coal at the beginning, or frighteningly unladen at the end. He also talks about the fact the chimneys belching out fire are so unstable that if you got caught in a storm, and they were knocked over, the whole ship would go up in flames.

“All these Victorian travellers were so brave. Today, no matter how much we think we’re intrepid, it’s nothing compared to putting yourself in these terrifying vessels and heading out to places unknown.”

Go here to read the full interview, and go here to order Lucinda's book!

From the book pile

• The Dickens Boy by Thomas Keneally (Atria Books, 2022)
  
  A novel about Edward "Plorn" Dickens, sent to Australia in his teens to try to make something of himself after doing poorly in school, is a great idea. And acclaimed novelist Thomas Keneally (Booker-Prize-winning author of Schindler's List) would seem just the person to write such a novel. His descriptive writing is beautiful, effectively conveying the wonder and enchantment of a young Englishman encountering the sweeping Australian wilderness for the first time. And he handles Plorn's and his siblings' complicated relationship with their father with both realism and sensitivity. So it took me a while to figure out why I wasn't enjoying the book very much. 
  
  I eventually pinpointed two reasons. The first is mainly a matter of personal taste: The book has a loosely episodic structure, without much of a story arc or narrative drive. It's not pushing toward any goal, aside from Plorn's rather vague goal to learn to apply himself and please his father. There's nothing inherently wrong with that sort of structure, but it just doesn't appeal to me much. (There's a reason I prefer late Dickens to early Dickens.)
  
  The second reason is more on the micro level: the often stiff and stilted nature of Plorn's narration. His sentence structure at times feels positively upside down and backwards -- for instance: "The question of whether Father had left the girl anything proved to be part of Alfred's musings, and many people would have said, why not?"  Even in 1869, a more formal period, it beggars belief that an undereducated adolescent would talk like that. And the stiltedness has the added effect of distancing us from the young man instead of feeling that we're really getting to know him. Keneally gets so much else right in this book, I don't know why he had trouble getting the voice right, but I couldn't help wishing he had made more of an effort in that direction. It would have improved the book so much.

Upcoming online talks

Tomorrow, April 27, Dr. Emily Dunbar of the Dickens Museum will give a talk on the museum's new Pickwick Papers exhibition at 10 a.m. Eastern. Go here to learn more and get a free ticket!

Also tomorrow, at 1 p.m. Eastern, the Dickens Fellowship will sponsor Lucinda Dickens Hawksley talking about her new book, Dickens and Travel. Go here for information.

A few minutes with Lucinda Hawksley

Dickens's great-great-great-granddaughter, while promoting her new book Letters of Great Women in Dubai, answered some questions about her ancestor's life and works. Click here to learn which Dickens books she rereads, her favorite Dickens quote, and what surprised her most about him.

'Dickens and Staplehurst': A review

By Art Kilmer, Guest Blogger

On June 9, 1865, author Charles Dickens almost died. Pick up any biography of Dickens, and you will find at least a couple of pages about the Staplehurst Rail Crash. On that day, Dickens; his mistress, Ellen Ternan; and her mother were traveling by rail from Boulogne to London, when the train derailed at Staplehurst, Kent. Due to a miscommunication and negligence, the train plunged over a bridge that was only half finished. Ten people died that day, and many others were physically and, as in Dickens’ case, mentally impacted for the rest of their lives. For Charles, that would be another five years to the day.

Actor and author Gerald Dickens, Charles’ great-great-grandson, has made an effort to shed more light on this event. In his new book, Dickens and Staplehurst: A Biography of a Rail Crash, Gerald attempts to give full details of the event. Not only does he explain what happened to Dickens on that tragic day, but we also learn about the ten victims, some of the survivors, and the railroad employees who were involved with the crash.

As Gerald says of his book: “At its heart this is a story of a single moment in time: a biography of a day.”