What The Dickens!?

In his Dictionary of British Literary Characters, John R. Greenfield writes that Charles Dickens created 989 specific (named) characters during his career. This link will bring you to an alphabetical list of characters by name, with descriptions and illustrations for many of them, along with the story or novel where they appeared. I looked up a few characters that I found interesting and ended up coming across some really hilarious names while I was surfing around. Among my favorite character names were: Anne Chickenstalker, Canon Crisparkle and Mary Peerybingle. Dickens certainly had a knack for inventing memorable names, which you can explore at this link!

This is a really neat “article” that shows the progression toward the eventual Futurist movement through examples of 18th and 19th century literature and art from the awesome blog HTMLGiant. While there is no explicit commentary on the progression toward futurism, the excerpts from literature and art and music stand alone in demonstrating the changes in society that eventually led to the futurist movement. The reason I’m including it on this blog is because there is an excerpt from Dickens’ Bleak House that shows how society was changing from the country lifestyle to the rise of dirty, busy cities and fast-paced lifestyles. Dickens obviously doesn’t expound the ideas of the futurists (in fact, his beliefs seem completely antithetical to futurist thought), but his writing does give insight into the circumstances that caused the emergence of the movement. It’s a really interesting progression shown through literature, art and music used as primary sources and you should definitely check it out!