A painting of a young Dickens on his first trip to America by Francis Alexander. 

(Professor Snape?!)

A Pickwick postcard drawn by A. Ludovici in 1906. One of the many pieces of Pickwick merchandise that arose after the great success of the stories. This one depicts Pickwick getting a kiss from a young lady, presumably a scene from The Wardles’ house. There were tons of illustrations, postcards and other merchandise created around the stories of Dickens and they show how popular and influential his works became. 

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

list of Dickens' characters →

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!

How Did Europe Arrive at Futurism: A Convulsive History of Art & Culture Previous to the Emergence of the Historical Avant-Garde →

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!

I was reading about the parallels between Mr. Pickwick and Don Quixote in this great article and it got me thinking about the word, “quixotic”. Both “The Pickwick Papers” and “Don Quixote” are considered to be great quixotic novels, which basically means that they are both about idealistic gentlemen who embark on noble adventures which backfire in silly ways. 

The similarity between the name Quixote and the word “quixotic” finally dawned on me as I was reading this article, and reading further, I learned that Don Quixote was the first origin of the word. I’ve always thought the word, “quixotic” was pretty awesome (phonetically and also in Scrabble) and so I was surprised and excited to finally put together this connection. 

I was curious to further learn the etymology of the word and so I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary. According to the OED, the first example of the word “quixotic” as an adjective appeared in 1718 when N. Amhurst wrote, “Pulpit and Press ficticious Ills engage, And combat Windmills with Quixotic Rage,” in his book, “Protestant Popery’.

Pretty neat! My next endeavor is to see if Dickens ever used the word in any of his writings, so stay tuned. 

Sources:

Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Online,  http://personales.ya.com/quijotepickwick/English.html

I made a silly Dancing Dickens animation! Enjoy :D 

Surfing around the internet, I came across the news that director Mike Newell (of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire fame) is coming out with a new film adaptation of Great Expectations. The film is apparently going to feature Ralph Fiennes (who is currently working on his own Dickens project) as the escaped convict Magwitch, and Helena Bonham Carter as the ghostly, manipulative Miss Havisham.

Great Expectations is apparently in post-production and slated to come out in 2012. Personally, I’m super excited to see it!! I’m also pretty excited, being the literature nerd that I am, about the comeback of some awesome classics lately being re-visited in film. I saw the new version of Jane Eyre (admittedly at my professor’s suggestions) and I was really happy with it, and actually really surprised at how accurately it was portrayed. 

This new cinematic interest in the works of Dickens is great. He’s still very relevant today and directors pitching his works to a new audience of readers, the Harry Potter crowd, seems like it could be a pretty awesome way to keep his works alive.

Personally, I’m really excited about the re-emergence of Dickens into modern cinema. Both Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter are both undeniably great actors (Voldemort and Belatrix LeStrange) who will bring new life into characters who haven’t seen the screen in quite some time. It would be very sad to see the works of Dickens be pushed to the wayside as they still have so much to offer in regard to humor and insight and characterization. 

(I can’t wait to see who’s going to play Wemmick)

In short, I’ve got great expectations for this up-coming film ;)

I found this amazing caricature of Dickens done by Court Jones. I’m particularly fond of his gigantic nose, (no wonder he had so many young women falling head over heels for him…)

I’m looking forward to reading more Dickens this semester, having thus far only read Great Expectations, and reading the short biography Brief Lives by Gregory and Klimaszewski has certainly further peaked my interest. I think my favorite detail that the biographers decided to mention was Dickens’ habit of giving his friends and family weird nicknames. He called his younger brother, and then himself, Boz, he called his children names like “Skittles” and “Plorn”, and of course he named his characters likewise (Pip, Tiny Tim, etc). I found this little bit of Dickens trivia to be endearing. Famous authors are often known for their quirks (I found a little list of some of them here), and Dickens had no shortage of eccentricities. 

Unfortunately, I can’t keep myself from making this connection, but another famous man with an affinity for nicknames was George W. Bush (who apparently called Vladimir Putin “Pootie-Poot”). And now I keep imagining the London home of Dickens as some kind of Victorian frat house with little Plorn running around whipping his brothers and sisters with a wet towel. Sorry Charlie Charles, you’re probably rolling in your grave right now.

I’m definitely looking forward to reading more Dickens soon, and to a time when I can write something of actual substance on this new blog of mine. 

Adios!

-Kait