Showing posts tagged Dombey and Son

Counting Down Dickens' Greatest Novels. Number 9: Dombey and Son

I cried when Paul Dombey died, but I wasn’t the only one. When the fifth installment of Dombey and Son was published in 1847 — the chapter in which the fragile young heir to the great Dombey import-export firm breathes his last — the entire nation of England was apparently prostrated by grief. William Thackeray, who was in the middle of serializing his novel Vanity Fair, was prostrated by envy. His verdict: “There’s no writing against such power as this — one has no chance!”

Was Dickens Really Paid By The Word?

The popular myth that Dickens’s novels are all so long because he was “paid by the word” is not really accurate. Dickens was not paid by the word. Rather, he was paid by installment.

"Sensation and Sublimation in Charles Dickens" by John Gordon

Gordon explores the psychology of characters in three Dickens novels -“Oliver Twist,” “Dombey and Son” and “Bleak House” - as well as that of the legendary author himself, and frames his analysis through the lens of pre-Freudian psychology.

whatthedickenz: Mr. Toots and the Game Chicken from Dombey and Son! This is pretty awesome, I wish I knew who drew it.

whatthedickenz:

Mr. Toots and the Game Chicken from Dombey and Son! This is pretty awesome, I wish I knew who drew it.

(Reblogged from whatthedickenz)
librorummeum: The 1867 Chapman and Hall ‘Charles Dickens’ edition untitled by Matt Neale on Flickr. View high resolution

librorummeum:

The 1867 Chapman and Hall ‘Charles Dickens’ edition

untitled by Matt Neale on Flickr.

(Reblogged from librorummeum)

sparklesdire:

There was no light nonsense about Miss Blimber. She kept her hair short and crisp, and wore spectacles. She was dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased languages. None of your live languages for Miss Blimber. They must be dead—stone dead—and then Miss Blimber dug them up like a Ghoul.

Dombey and Son, Ch. 11

(Reblogged from sparklesdire)
“
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
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Blessed Sunday Bells, ringing so tranquilly in their entranced and happy ears! Blessed Sunday peace and quiet, harmonizing with the calmness in their souls, and making holy air around them!
Dombey and Son, chap. 51
Diogenes and Florence

Diogenes and Florence

“
He gave Mr. Dombey his hand, as if he feared it might electrify him. Mr. Dombey took it as if it were a fish, or seaweed, or some such clammy substance, and immediately returned it to him with exalted politeness.
Dombey and Son, chp. 5
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What are we to live for but sympathy? What else is so extremely charming? Without that
gleam of sunshine on our cold, cold earth… how could we possibly bear it?
Dombey & Son, chap. 21
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Captain Cuttle, like all mankind, little knew how much hope had survived within him under discouragement, until he felt its death-shock.
Dombey and Son, chap. 32
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Mrs. Chick was laboring under a peculiar little monosyllabic cough; a sort of primer, or easy introduction to the art of coughing.
Dombey and Son, chap. 29
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Nature intended me for an Arcadian. I am thrown away in society. Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for, has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows— and china.
Dombey and Son, chap. 21
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I have heard some talk about duty first and last: but it has always been of my duty to other people. I have wondered now and then— to pass away the time— whether no one ever owed any duty to me.
Dombey and Son, chap. 34