February 2011
52 posts
7 tags
Historian says she’s found Oliver Twist’s... →
A medical historian has found what she thinks is the model for the workhouse in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist.
7 tags
'I'm a writer. I've come to terms with that' →
Interview with Gaynor Arnold, author of Girl in a Blue Dress, “a thinly veiled retelling of Charles Dickens’s marriage narrated by his jilted wife, Catherine, that was longlisted for two prestigious literary prizes – the Man Booker and the Orange.”
January 2011
103 posts
4 tags
For Kids: An homage to Dickens →
Review of The Haunting of Charles Dickens by Lewis Buzbee
5 tags
A history of Victorian violence →
Review of The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime By Judith Flanders
MURDERS WERE not that common in 19th-century England, despite what you might gather from reading Charles Dickens, but some practitioners of the crime became household names.
4 tags
8 tags
5 tags
3 tags
4 tags
“We spent as much money as we could and got as little for it as people could make...”
– Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (via ridleyduchannes)
2 tags
3 tags
4 tags
“Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the...”
– Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist)
3 tags
A Poor Man's Tale of a Patent →
In Dickens world, the patent applicant was forced to walk through 35–stages and spend the equivalent of $15,000 in order to obtain a patent.
[…]
The British government was apparently quite moved by the essay and quickly passed the Patent Law Admendment Act of 1852 that established a single office to control patenting.
2 tags
5 tags
“It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of all public...”
– Little Dorrit, chap. 10
3 tags
The power of words, reading as therapy →
For the past seven Christmases, GIR has hosted a revival of Charles Dickens’s Penny Readings at St George’s Hall in Liverpool, at which the admission is one penny, just as it was in Dickens’s day. In fact, with its optimism and practical philanthropy, GIR and The Reader Organisation are reminiscent of the best of the improving Victorian social crusaders. The city of Liverpool, now restored to...
6 tags
Anti-Americanism among the British →
Charles Dickens shared [Mrs. Frances Trollope’s] disappointment and ridicule after he toured the U.S. in 1842. Not only were the natives uncouth—tobacco chewing revolted him, too—but their defiance of copyright law also meant that he earned no royalties on the hundreds of Dickens novels bootlegged at his sold-out readings. Both writers detested slavery and found it grossly...
4 tags
7 tags
The Brilliance of Dickens and Trollope at Isle of... →
One-man shows by Lloyd Lee and Edward Fox will bring to life the sparkling wit and humanity of these two giants of English literature on Saturday 16 April.
4 tags
BBC to provide answer to Charles Dickens' final... →
Dickens’ unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, to be given latest plot twist in new BBC adaptation
4 tags
4 tags
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, 150 years of helping... →
The Battersea Dogs & Cats Home has been helping animals for 150 years and now, with three shelters, it provides care for about 800 animals at one time.
The first dogs home - The Temporary Home for Lost and Starving Dogs - was founded in 1860 by Mary Tealby. The shelter received some publicity when Charles Dickens wrote an article supporting it and printed it in his newspaper.
4 tags
'Why should we leave Irish history to the Irish?' →
“Why should we leave Irish history to the Irish?” Stafford-Clark says. “Last year I directed the premiere of Anderson’s English by Sebastian Barry, which was based on a visit Hans Christian Anderson paid to Charles Dickens. It was a play about one of the best-known English writers, and written by an Irishman, so why not have a play about the Irish by an Englishman? Any country’s history is...
3 tags
2 tags
8 tags
London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew →
If you are familiar with the works of Charles Dickens then Henry Mayhew’s observations of life among the working classes and the destitute of early Victorian London will come as no shock. Indeed, the only surprise may be about how little, if at all, the novelist exaggerated when he depicted the misery of the poor of the Great Wen in books such as Oliver Twist or Our Mutual Friend.
8 tags
London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew →
If you are familiar with the works of Charles Dickens then Henry Mayhew’s observations of life among the working classes and the destitute of early Victorian London will come as no shock. Indeed, the only surprise may be about how little, if at all, the novelist exaggerated when he depicted the misery of the poor of the Great Wen in books such as Oliver Twist or Our Mutual Friend.
5 tags
“Of the numerous receptacles for misery and distress with which the streets of...”
– Sketches by Boz, chap. 23
3 tags
“A variety of expletive adjectives let loose upon society without any substantive...”
– The Pickwick Papers, chap. 42
5 tags
“And when the petition had been read and was about to be adopted, there came...”
– Nicholas Nickleby, chap. 2
5 tags
“And when the petition had been read and was about to be adopted, there came...”
– Nicholas Nickleby, chap. 2
3 tags
3 tags
4 tags
“Verily, verily, travellers have seen many monstrous idols in many countries; but...”
– Little Dorrit, book 2, chap. 30
4 tags
“Verily, verily, travellers have seen many monstrous idols in many countries; but...”
– Little Dorrit, book 2, chap. 30
3 tags
3 tags
5 tags
5 tags
“… a horse so old that his birthday was lost in the mists of antiquity.”
– The Cricket on the Hearth, chap. 1
5 tags
“… a horse so old that his birthday was lost in the mists of antiquity.”
– The Cricket on the Hearth, chap. 1
4 tags
ACLU blasts jail fee proposal →
‘Booking and housing fees are antiquated ideas that belong in Charles Dickens novels, not modern-day Ohio”
4 tags
ACLU blasts jail fee proposal →
‘Booking and housing fees are antiquated ideas that belong in Charles Dickens novels, not modern-day Ohio”
5 tags
BBC announces Christmas Dickens drama →
A “bold” new version of Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations will be screened on BBC One at Christmas.
3 tags
“And a mighty yellow jaundiced little office Mr. Fips had of it; with a great,...”
– Martin Chuzzlewit, chap. 39
3 tags
“And a mighty yellow jaundiced little office Mr. Fips had of it; with a great,...”
– Martin Chuzzlewit, chap. 39
3 tags
“‘People may say what they like,’ observed Mrs Nickleby, ‘but...”
– Nicholas Nickleby, chap. 37
3 tags
“‘People may say what they like,’ observed Mrs Nickleby, ‘but...”
– Nicholas Nickleby, chap. 37
4 tags
“It was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and...”
– A Tale of Two Cities, chap. 9
4 tags
“It was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and...”
– A Tale of Two Cities, chap. 9
6 tags
“I have heard, as everybody else has, of a spirit’s haunting a house, but I have...”
– “A House to Let” Charles Dickens (via straitjacketbook) 