I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. The women (their noses in a chronic state of excoriation from smelling-salts) were always primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready to go off with hair-triggers.
- Charles Dickens, ‘The Haunted House’ (1859) in Three Ghost Stories [full text]
November 2010
80 posts
October 2010
149 posts
“The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest, near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation: Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heard of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in this High Court of Chancery.”
—
Bleak House, Charles Dickens Chap 1
Such imagery…the law is polluted, clouded, and obstructive.
(via booklover206)
“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollution of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights.”
—Bleak House, Charles Dickens Chap 1 (via booklover206)
“Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.”
—
Bleak House, Charles Dickens, Chap 1
I love the writing, the imagery. I’m on Chap 5
(via booklover206)
A fair morning for a brisk walk →
guardian.co.uk
Tom Pinch, one of the more becoming figures in the novel Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), is on the move. “What better time for driving, riding, walking, moving through the air by any means, than a fresh, frosty morning, when hope runs cheerily though the veins with the brisk blood, and tingles in the frame from head to foot,”…
Dickens & Dust →
londonist.com
An artist is asking for the public to send in its household dust:
Korda’s work is inspired by the commercialisation of waste in Victorian London, in particular the vast dust heaps which dominated the skylines at the top of Gray’s Inn Road. Immortalised by Charles Dickens in Our Mutual Friend, the dust heaps supported a wide range of industries including the making of bricks. Mud from the brick fields of Somers Town was mixed with the ash, cinders and rubbish from the dust heaps, recycling the discarded detritus and dirt of London into the material from which the expanding city was built.
Dickens & Comic Fiction →
smh.com.au
From an article about comic fiction and its characters (a large chunk of which is, for good reason, about Dickens!):
In and around these wonderful, truthful characters is Dickens’s equally wonderful circumlocution. There’s a delight I get simply from the way Dickens expresses something. It’s quite separate and distinct from what is being written about.
Early edition of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice auctioned for £140,000 →
dailymail.co.uk
The book was among 149 volumes sold by Sotheby’s in London for an anonymous 75-year-old collector, raising more than £3.1million.
The top lot was a signed first edition of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, which went for £181,250.
“When Thackeray died, the last mourner at his graveside in London’s Kensal Green cemetery was Charles Dickens, the only English writer to achieve greater fame in the mid-19th century. Murray said: “Dickens, his great rival, stayed at his graveside for an hour after everyone else had left… all the actors and gambling buddies and journalists and,” – Murray coughs – “prostitutes.”
—
“Pub landlord reveals his literary side”, The Independent
“I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I then formed.”
—David Copperfield, Charles Dickens (via reinventinfive)
Dickens and animals →
google.com
The Duchess of Cornwall is set to visit Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in south London to open its new cattery…
In the early years it received help from Charles Dickens, who penned a newspaper article called Two Dog Shows in support of the Home, before it moved to south London.
Charles Dickens treasures made available to public →
bbc.co.uk
One of the most comprehensive collections of Charles Dickens memorabilia is to be made available to the public for the first time.
Understanding the Web, for Fans of Charles Dickens →
fastcompany.com
A flow chart explaining the Internet to Oliver Twist
“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.”
—Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1860 (via suzywaffles)
