“So do the shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.”
—Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge, chap. 29 (via marriageofhh)
April 2011
23 posts
“She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was—anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.”
—David Copperfield, chap. 26 (via quotinglove)
Search for history of Bury mansion →
burytimes.co.uk
Part of an historic Bury mansion owned by two brothers who inspired writer Charles Dickens is being restored.
William and Daniel Grant purchased Springside in 1818 and lived there until they died. They were the inspiration for the fictional Cheeryble brothers characters for Charles Dickens‘ story of Nicholas Nickleby.
Why we love the rat race →
nypost.com
Addicted to work?
Consider the Dickens Paradox. In George Orwell’s essay on Charles Dickens, he wonders what the Victorian novelist’s heroes get up to after the books end: “The answer evidently is that they did nothing … That is the spirit in which most of Dickens’ books end — a sort of radiant idleness. His heroes, once they had come into money and ‘settled down,’ would not only do no work; they would not even ride, hunt, shoot, fight duels, elope with actresses or lose money at the races. They would simply live at home in feather-bed respectability, and preferably next door to a blood-relation living exactly the same life.”
That was how Dickens wrote. Now consider how he lived…
“A marble rock could not have stood more obdurately in his way than she; and no chilled spring, lying uncheered by any ray of light in the depths of a deep cave, could be more sullen or more cold than he.”
—Dombey & Son, chap. 47
Hugh Laurie Lands 'Mr. Pip' Book-To-Film Starring Role →
huffingtonpost.com
Looking forward to this!
Hugh Laurie has been cast in the film adaptation of Lloyd Jones’ 2006 book, “Mr. Pip,” Deadline reports. Laurie will play the Mr. Watts, the only white man on a foreign island who volunteers to teach school as the natives defend their land from invaders. He reads the students Charles Dickens’ classic novel, “Great Expectations,” connecting especially with a 13-year old girl, Matilda.
“It’s like a time machine has suddenly whisked us from a Charles Dickens workhouse to an auto plant in the 21st century,” said one farm worker.”
—“Tomato School: Undoing the Evils of the Fields”
As ethical tomatoes become more common, a new curriculum teaches migrant workers about minimum wage, proper conditions, and how not to be exploited
As ethical tomatoes become more common, a new curriculum teaches migrant workers about minimum wage, proper conditions, and how not to be exploited
“It was on one of those mornings, common in early spring, when the year, fickle and changeable in its youth, like all other created things, is undecided whether to step backward into winter or forward into summer, and in its uncertainty inclines now to the one and now to the other, and now to both at once—wooing summer, in the sunshine, and lingering still with winter in the shade—it was, in short, on one of those mornings, when it is hot and cold, wet and dry, bright and lowering, sad and cheerful, withering and genial, in the compass of one short hour.”
—Barnaby Rudge, chap. 10
To those who celebrate, Happy Easter!
The following is from Dickens’ very personal piece, The Life of Our Lord, which was written for his young children in the 1840s and not published until the last of his children had passed away (almost a century later). The manuscript is now located at the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Remember! — It is Christianity to do good always — even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbours as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them do to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts, and never make a boast of them or of our prayers or of our love of God, but always to show that we love Him by humbly trying to do right in everything.
Harry Lloyd: The man who would be king →
independent.co.uk
“If you’re going to be related to someone it might as well be Dickens… But I’m very proud of it and I do quite enjoy how people congratulate you for it, even though you’ve done nothing to deserve it. It’s like I was born with an extra finger – it’s just one of the things that I came with.”
(the actor is Dickens’ great-great-great grandson)
The blossoming of Bloomsbury →
thisislondon.co.uk
Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, political exiles, medical pioneers, Swedenborgians, Unitarians and other non-conformists, educational innovators, architects and more.
Salman Rushdie on Dickens →
indyweek.com
… opening with Dickens was shrewd on Rushdie’s part. Without saying so explicitly, Rushdie essentially anointed himself the Dickens of his time, and he may be right: Like Dickens, he is not only wildly, peerlessly famous (and a Londoner), the author of many beloved books, but also, like Dickens, imperiled by exposure.
Modern versus Civil War travel costs →
latimes.com
Transatlantic cruises, costly back in Charles Dickens’ day, are still a pricey luxury. And today’s rail travel, when adjusted for inflation, is a bargain by antebellum standards.
