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dickensdaily · 5 days
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"[...] That chap, I was a saying, though he has all his faculties about him, somewheres or another, bottled up and corked down, has no more imagination than Barnaby has. [...]"
- John Willet, Chapter 11, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
I think this is an interesting comparison between Barnaby and Hugh... Lots of characters in this book are foils to each other, including these two.
I don't think we're meant to take everything John Willet says about the cognitive abilities and limitations of Barnaby and Hugh as the inarguable truth, but I do think Dickens is deliberately drawing the readers' attention to the similarities between these two characters, and pointing out (through John's subsequent explanation about Hugh's [lack of] upbringing) that similar results can be reached in different ways:
"Why hasn’t he?" said John, gently striking the table with his open hand. "Because they was never drawed out of him when he was a boy. That’s why. What would any of us have been, if our fathers hadn’t drawed our faculties out of us? [...]"
Barnaby is what we might nowadays refer to as developmentally disabled; Hugh, on the other hand, is developmentally denied.
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dickensdaily · 5 days
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"[...] see, when I talk of eyes, the stars come out! Whose eyes are they? If they are angels’ eyes, why do they look down here and see good men hurt, and only wink and sparkle all the night?"
- chapter 3, Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
One thing I noticed on my first read of Barnaby Rudge is that Dickens seems to take a different approach to religion and/or the divine than in his other novels. It does feel very fitting to the type of novel BR is...
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dickensdaily · 13 days
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Dickens in the foreword to Bleak House
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dickensdaily · 1 month
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"... and on his rusty black coat, and all down his long flapped waistcoat, little queer buttons like nothing except his eyes; but so like them, that as they twinkled and glistened in the light of the fire, which shone too in his bright shoe-buckles, he seemed all eyes from head to foot, and to be gazing with every one of them at the unknown customer."
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dickensdaily · 2 months
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There's still time...
There's still time to sign up for our second novel, Barnaby Rudge!
If you enjoy the installments of Dracula Daily, why not try Dickens Daily? We serialise the works of Charles Dickens at the same pace as they were originally published, so you'll get to find out how the Victorians felt waiting for the next chapter!
Our next novel will start going out on the 13th of February 2024 and last until November! Read on below to learn more about the book and to sign up.
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Set against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots of 1780, Barnaby Rudge is a story of mystery and suspense which begins with an unsolved double murder and goes on to involve conspiracy, blackmail, abduction and retribution. Through the course of the novel fathers and sons become opposed, apprentices plot against their masters and anti-Catholic mobs rampage through the streets. With its dramatic descriptions of public violence and private horror, its strange secrets and ghostly doublings, Barnaby Rudge is a powerful, disturbing blend of historical realism and Gothic melodrama.
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dickensdaily · 2 months
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The Many Illustrators of A Tale of Two Cities 1: Hablot Knight Browne (a.k.a. Phiz)
...& a century-and-a-half-long game of telephone...
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For the first post in a series on the book's illustrators, how could we start with any but the very first one?
"Although a number of critics have pilloried Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz') for his supposed ineptitude in the program of illustration for A Tale of Two Cities, the fact that he so astutely realized and graphically elaborated so many significant elements of Dickens's letterpress is evidence that his pictorial series reflects an extremely careful reading of the printed text...The visual accompaniment [that these illustrations provided to the novel's monthly installments] was not mere ornamentation, but an aide-mémoire intended to facilitate the monthly reader's keeping track of a discontinuous narrative over a period of seven months."
from "Charles Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities" (1859) Illustrated: A Critical Reassessment of Hablot Knight Browne's Accompanying Plates" by Philip V. Allingham from the 2003 volume of the journal Dickens Studies Annual.
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Frontispiece Cover to the Monthly Installments Vignette
For some perspective on the significance of this first set of illustrations - published initially within monthly installments of the novel in 1859 (the text of which was collected from the original weekly installments published in All the Year Round, also in 1859) - that single quote comes from an entire article on these illustrations that is itself 49 pages long.
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The Mail
As such, suffice it to say that this particular post will not be a thorough examination of the history, context, and impact of these illustrations (though, for those interested, be sure to click on any links you see throughout this post for all sorts of further reading!).
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The Shoemaker
Instead, it will simply be a place to observe and appreciate these illustrations for what they are, in their "original" glory.
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The Likeness
...I mean, just look at these things! (I'm of course gonna break formality after this one because it's my favorite😌)
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Congratulations
In terms of the odyssey of finding the proper edition of these to post, "original" is the operative word.
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The Stoppage at the Fountain
These are the oldest (except for some or possibly all of McLenan's...more on that many months from now though) and certainly the most iconic of the illustrations of this novel and thus have also had the most mileage, having been passed from edition to edition to edition countless times over the last 164 years.
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Mr. Stryver at Tellson's Bank
That means - as the gif at the top of this post demonstrates - that these illustrations have slowly been "translated" over time into dozens of distinct images - in ways as innocuous as a change in a shadow and as striking as a change in a character's facial expression.
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The Spy's Funeral
These translations have happened in all sorts of ways over the development of printing technology - blemishes, xeroxing errors, low-quality or blurry scans, too much ink being used in printing, image compression, sometimes even actual tracing of the original illustrations! - and as interesting as they can be on their own, for someone determined to find the most accurate representation of Phiz's phenomenal work, they can be...phrustrating.
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The Wine-shop
In fact, as a sidebar, the illustrations that I used for the Best Character Showdown bracket turned out to themselves be traces and not originals! I am Ashamed and disheartened! You could even say that I am yet another...
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The Accomplices
accomplice in the mistranslation of Phiz's work!
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The Sea Rises
Rest assured, though - although they are not from the monthly installments themselves (which as far as my research has gone do not seem to be anywhere on the Internet), these particular scans are sourced directly from an online scan at the Open Library project (contained within the Internet Archive) of the first edition of A Tale of Two Cities, itself also published in 1859.
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Before the Prison Tribunal
I do wish that they hadn't been cropped the way that they have and that they were available in a (much) higher resolution, but as of now, they're the best representation of Phiz's original work that we netizens have!
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The Knock at the Door
A Tale of Two Cities was the final novel that Phiz illustrated for Dickens - and marked the complicated ending to a twenty-three-year (yes) professional partnership between the author and illustrator - but his work here will mark a beautiful beginning to the long archiving project we will experience together here on this blog.
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The Double Recognition
Throughout the work of this project, there will be quite a variety of sources being used - from direct scans by me to the two-tone abstractions of PDFs clearly not created for the purpose of storing image information - depending on the needs and availability of each edition.
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After the Sentence
All of it goes to show the importance of accuracy and attention to detail in archiving art, which is itself an art form to be appreciated.
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Hope you've enjoyed!
& the standard endnote for all posts in this series:
This post is intended to act as the start of a forum on the given illustrator, so if anyone has anything to add - requests to see certain drawings in higher definition (since Tumblr compresses images), corrections to factual errors, sources for better-quality versions of the illustrations, further reading, fun facts, any questions, or just general commentary - simply do so on this post, be it in a comment/tags or the replies!💫
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dickensdaily · 2 months
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This looks like a very useful resource! A similar website which might be of interest is victorianserialnovels.org!
Reading Like A Victorian
A while ago, I discovered the website 'Reading Like a Victorian', a digital humanities project from The Ohio State University and collaborators.
Since tumblr's been going through a bit of a serial-literature revival, I thought I would share...
Here are some extracts from the website's 'About Us':
RLV is an interactive timeline of the Victorian period. It focuses on serialized novels [...] and adds volume-format publications for context. 
When we read Victorian novels today, we do not read them in the form in which they originally came out. Most Victorian novels appeared either as “triple deckers,” three volumes released at one time, or as serials published monthly or weekly in periodicals or in pamphlet form. Serialized novels’ regularly timed, intermittent appearance made for a reading experience resembling what we do when we are awaiting the next weekly episode of Game of Thrones, watching installments of other TV serials in the meantime. Whenever we pick up a Penguin or Oxford paperback of a Victorian novel today, we are engaged in the equivalent of binge-watching a series that has already reached its broadcast ending [and is] a very different experience from what Victorian audiences were doing with novels. Reading Like a Victorian reproduces the “serial moment” experienced by Victorian readers [...]
More info and screenshots and so on below the cut:
[...] if reading serial installments at their original pace is valuable, it is even more valuable to read them alongside parts of novels and of other kinds of texts that Victorian readers could have been following at the same time [...] [...] a reader who, in 1847, had been following the part issues of both Dickens’s Dombey and Son and Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and then picked up Jane Eyre, published in volume form in October of that year, might notice in Florence Dombey, Becky Sharp, and Jane Eyre a pattern of motherless or orphaned girls trying to negotiate a hostile world on their own. While this figure is well known to be a character type in Victorian fiction perfectly embodied by Jane Eyre and Florence Dombey, Becky Sharp does not often emerge among the heroines who fit that type; reading the novels simultaneously foregrounds parallels between Becky, Florence, and Jane that are not at all obvious if their storylines are experienced separately
I find that, for browsing, the website is easier to use on a computer or tablet than a phone, but it's ok on phone to search for something specific.
The timeline:
Here's what the timeline looks like:
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It shows 12 months at a time, and using the left and right arrows will move you back or forward by a month. You can use the 'Jump To Date' function to navigate to a different twelve-month period. Or you can use the 'Author Search' function to navigate to particular works if you know the author's name.
In the above screenshot of the timeline, which shows the period January to December 1852, there are several works shown, including:
ongoing serialised works which had at least one installment published prior to 1852;
works which began serialisation during 1852;
works published in three-volume format during 1852;
other works published during 1852
Details about each work:
You can click on the bar that represents a book's publication to get a drop-down that provides information about that book, its publication, and links to help you read the relevant serial parts.
Here's what happens if you click on Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford:
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On the left of the drop-down, there's some general information about the work, its publication history, and how to use the links.
On the right, there's information and links to help you experience the book in its serial parts: it separates out the parts, indicates the month and the year they were published, and what chapters of the work were published in that part. It also provides notes on each part where helpful. There is a scroll-bar at the right of the drop-down, so you can scroll down to the later installments of the work.
[I chose Cranford as an example as it helps demonstrate the value of the Reading Like a Victorian website... From what I understand, Gaskell initially wrote 'Our Society at Cranford' as a standalone piece of short fiction, but was encouraged to write more, so further pieces also set in the fictional town of Cranford were published intermittently in the same magazine over the next year or so. While a particularly dedicated Gaskell fan who wanted to 'read along' with Cranford following the original publication could probably search 1.5-years-worth of a weekly magazine to find the 9 issues which included the material which would later be published as Cranford, the Reading Like a Victorian website has already done that work for them... and also for anyone else who might be interested, but not quite that interested.]
The links
You can then click on an individual chapter to get links to various places to read it online:
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When available / where possible, the website tends to include links to:
a facsimile copy of either the relevant serial part in the original publication, or in an 'annual' or similar volume collecting together the content of that publication, or a volume-form edition of that work if the work was not published serially or if facsimile copies of the original serialised publication are not available. [Most of the facsimiles are hosted by either the Internet Archive or the Hathi Trust Digital Library, but some are hosted as part of smaller, more specific collections, such as - in the case of Cranford - Dickens Journals Online which provides online access to the journals/magazines edited by Charles Dickens);
the text, usually on Project Gutenberg (this is usually the volume-form text, so the exact content and chapter breaks and so on may be different than originally published in serial parts; the Reading Like A Victorian website will generally explain when this is the case);
audio recordings, usually volunteer recordings from Librivox (again, the recordings are usually based on the volume-form text, so the exact content and chapter breaks and so on may be slightly different than originally published in the serial parts).
So yeah, I just thought it was a cool website and worth sharing. I believe the website is already used as a resource by some University courses and for academic research, but it can also be used by book clubs and to aid personal reading, etc. I'm using it to inform a personal reading project for 2024-26 where I follow along with six or seven novels serialised in 1864-66.
To save a scroll to the top, here's the link to the RLV website again: Reading Like A Victorian (osu.edu)
[If you want to join an already-planned read-along based on the original serialisation schedule, @dickensdaily will be doing Charles Dickens's historical novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty from mid-February 2024 to late-November 2024, to follow along with the original weekly publication of the novel in Master Humphreys Clock from February 1841 to November 1841. I personally found Barnaby Rudge a really engaging, thought-provoking read, and I'm really looking forward to reading it again. (Anyone with particular triggers or other reasons to be wary of the content or language used in older books may find it helpful to look up content warnings for the book before making a decision to read it.)]
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dickensdaily · 2 months
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A reminder and a preface all about ravens
Master Humphrey’s Clock is ticking…
This is merely a reminder that Dickens Daily will be returning to your inboxes next month with our second novel, Barnaby Rudge. Originally serialised in 1841, instalments will be sent out from 13th February 2024 until the end of November. As with Great Expectations, chapters will be sent out either once or twice per week depending on what was included in the relevant 1841 instalment of Master Humphrey’s Clock for that week.
There is a slight complication this time, due to 2024 being a leap year when 1841 was not. This means that the weekdays for the emails will change after a couple of weeks to keep in line with the correct dates, but after that they will remain steady. Thus, Chapters 1-5 will be sent out on Tuesdays and Fridays, then from Chapter 6 (6th March) onwards they will be sent out on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
If you haven't signed up yet, you can do so at dickensdaily.substack.com!
Get excited!
To whet your appetite, we’ve included below the preface Dickens wrote for the 1849 cheap edition of Barnaby Rudge. This did not appear when originally serialised, so this is just a little extra! Get ready to learn all about ravens…
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Dickens’ raven Grip, taxidermied
Preface to Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens
The late Mr Waterton having, some time ago, expressed his opinion that ravens are gradually becoming extinct in England, I offered the few following words about my experience of these birds.
The raven in this story is a compound of two great originals, of whom I was, at different times, the proud possessor. The first was in the bloom of his youth, when he was discovered in a modest retirement in London, by a friend of mine, and given to me. He had from the first, as Sir Hugh Evans says of Anne Page, ‘good gifts’, which he improved by study and attention in a most exemplary manner. He slept in a stable—generally on horseback—and so terrified a Newfoundland dog by his preternatural sagacity, that he has been known, by the mere superiority of his genius, to walk off unmolested with the dog’s dinner, from before his face. He was rapidly rising in acquirements and virtues, when, in an evil hour, his stable was newly painted. He observed the workmen closely, saw that they were careful of the paint, and immediately burned to possess it. On their going to dinner, he ate up all they had left behind, consisting of a pound or two of white lead; and this youthful indiscretion terminated in death.
While I was yet inconsolable for his loss, another friend of mine in Yorkshire discovered an older and more gifted raven at a village public-house, which he prevailed upon the landlord to part with for a consideration, and sent up to me. The first act of this Sage, was, to administer to the effects of his predecessor, by disinterring all the cheese and halfpence he had buried in the garden—a work of immense labour and research, to which he devoted all the energies of his mind. When he had achieved this task, he applied himself to the acquisition of stable language, in which he soon became such an adept, that he would perch outside my window and drive imaginary horses with great skill, all day. Perhaps even I never saw him at his best, for his former master sent his duty with him, ‘and if I wished the bird to come out very strong, would I be so good as to show him a drunken man’—which I never did, having (unfortunately) none but sober people at hand.
But I could hardly have respected him more, whatever the stimulating influences of this sight might have been. He had not the least respect, I am sorry to say, for me in return, or for anybody but the cook; to whom he was attached—but only, I fear, as a Policeman might have been. Once, I met him unexpectedly, about half-a-mile from my house, walking down the middle of a public street, attended by a pretty large crowd, and spontaneously exhibiting the whole of his accomplishments. His gravity under those trying circumstances, I can never forget, nor the extraordinary gallantry with which, refusing to be brought home, he defended himself behind a pump, until overpowered by numbers. It may have been that he was too bright a genius to live long, or it may have been that he took some pernicious substance into his bill, and thence into his maw—which is not improbable, seeing that he new-pointed the greater part of the garden-wall by digging out the mortar, broke countless squares of glass by scraping away the putty all round the frames, and tore up and swallowed, in splinters, the greater part of a wooden staircase of six steps and a landing—but after some three years he too was taken ill, and died before the kitchen fire. He kept his eye to the last upon the meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over on his back with a sepulchral cry of ‘Cuckoo!’ Since then I have been ravenless.*
Of the story of BARNABY RUDGE itself, I do not think I can say anything here, more to the purpose than the following passages from the original Preface.
‘No account of the Gordon Riots having been to my knowledge introduced into any Work of Fiction, and the subject presenting very extraordinary and remarkable features, I was led to project this Tale.
‘It is unnecessary to say, that those shameful tumults, while they reflect indelible disgrace upon the time in which they occurred, and all who had act or part in them, teach a good lesson. That what we falsely call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion, and who in their daily practice set at nought the commonest principles of right and wrong; that it is begotten of intolerance and persecution; that it is senseless, besotted, inveterate and unmerciful; all History teaches us. But perhaps we do not know it in our hearts too well, to profit by even so humble an example as the ‘No Popery’ riots of Seventeen Hundred and Eighty. ‘However imperfectly those disturbances are set forth in the following pages, they are impartially painted by one who has no sympathy with the Romish Church, though he acknowledges, as most men do, some esteemed friends among the followers of its creed. ‘It may be observed that, in the description of the principal outrages, reference has been had to the best authorities of that time, such as they are; the account given in this Tale, of all the main features of the Riots, is substantially correct. ‘It may be further remarked, that Mr Dennis’s allusions to the flourishing condition of his trade in those days, have their foundation in Truth, and not in the Author’s fancy. Any file of old Newspapers, or odd volume of the Annual Register, will prove this with terrible ease. ‘Even the case of Mary Jones, dwelt upon with so much pleasure by the same character, is no effort of invention. The facts were stated, exactly as they are stated here, in the House of Commons. Whether they afforded as much entertainment to the merry gentlemen assembled there, as some other most affecting circumstances of a similar nature mentioned by Sir Samuel Romilly, is not recorded.’
That the case of Mary Jones may speak the more emphatically for itself, I subjoin it, as related by SIR WILLIAM MEREDITH in a speech in Parliament, ‘on Frequent Executions’, made in 1777.
‘Under this act,’ the Shop-lifting Act, ‘one Mary Jones was executed, whose case I shall just mention; it was at the time when press warrants were issued, on the alarm about Falkland Islands. The woman’s husband was pressed, their goods seized for some debts of his, and she, with two small children, turned into the streets a-begging. It is a circumstance not to be forgotten, that she was very young (under nineteen), and most remarkably handsome. She went to a linen-draper’s shop, took some coarse linen off the counter, and slipped it under her cloak; the shopman saw her, and she laid it down: for this she was hanged. Her defence was (I have the trial in my pocket), “that she had lived in credit, and wanted for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her husband from her; but since then, she had no bed to lie on; nothing to give her children to eat; and they were almost naked; and perhaps she might have done something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did.” The parish officers testified the truth of this story; but it seems, there had been a good deal of shop-lifting about Ludgate; an example was thought necessary; and this woman was hanged for the comfort and satisfaction of shopkeepers in Ludgate Street. When brought to receive sentence, she behaved in such a frantic manner, as proved her mind to be in a distracted and desponding state; and the child was sucking at her breast when she set out for Tyburn.’
LONDON, March 1849
* This was later updated to the below for the 1858 Library Edition:
After this mournful deprivation, I was, for a long time, ravenless. The kindness of another friend at length provided me with another raven; but he is not a genius. He leads the life of a hermit, in my little orchard, on the summit of SHAKESPEARE’S Gad’s Hill; he has no relish for society; he gives no evidence of ever cultivating his mind; and he has picked up nothing but meat since I have known him – except the faculty of barking like a dog.
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dickensdaily · 4 months
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A Dickens December
'Marley was dead...'
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Dickens Daily is still on hiatus, but for anyone looking for a little more Dickens this Christmas, fellow Dickens substack A Dickens December is serialising A Christmas Carol all this month.
While not originally a serialised work, getting a little bit of the classic Christmas novella in your inbox each day is the the perfect advent calendar for any Dickens enthusiast!
You can catch up on today’s entry and subscribe here: https://adickensdecember.substack.com/
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dickensdaily · 5 months
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Please note that the original version of this post, in which The Old Curiosity Shop was shown as finishing in November 1841, was incorrect!
It was created with the best information I had at the time, but Wikipedia was wrong. When I recently gained access to proper scans of Master Humphrey's Clock, I discovered that The Old Curiosity Shop actually finished in February 1841, so there was in fact no overlap with Barnaby Rudge.
Both Wikipedia and this post have now been corrected, so please reblog the corrected version. The original post can be found here, to avoid anyone having to reblog this correction information.
A Dickens Calendar
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A calendar of every Dickens novel and its serialisation. One page version under the cut.
Keep reading
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dickensdaily · 8 months
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What Next? Our next novel revealed!
And the winner is…
Thank you so much for joining us in reading Great Expectations! We hope you enjoyed it just as much as we did.
“Enough of that,” we hear you cry! “What happens next?”
Last month, a poll was conducted to decide just that. The people have spoken and the votes have been tallied, so we can now reveal that our next Dickens Daily novel will be…
Barnaby Rudge
What is Barnaby Rudge?
A tale of the 1780 Gordon Riots, with murders and family conspiracies to boot, Dickens’ fifth novel, Barnaby Rudge,was serialised between February and November 1841 in the weekly publication Master Humphrey’s Clock.
Beginning as a vehicle for short stories - with the framing device of an old gentleman, Master Humphrey, and his friends telling stories in their society formed around the eponymous clock - Master Humphrey’s Clock did not sell too well, and so Dickens was forced to serialise first The Old Curiosity Shop and then Barnaby Rudge to keep it going.
What does this mean?
This means that our next full-length novel will begin in February 2024. Set your watches now!
As with Great Expectations, chapters will be sent out over two days for weeks where two chapters were published.
2024 being a leap year, unlike 1841, the days of the week will change a few chapters in so we can keep sending out entries on the correct dates. Chapters 1-5 will be sent out on Tuesdays and Fridays, then from Chapter 6 onwards they will be sent out on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
What about the next 6 months?
There are no definite plans for the time leading up to the start of Barnaby Rudge. However, since the hiatus will cover the Christmas period, there is a chance we will serialise one of Dickens’ many Christmas stories. We’ll be sure to let you know well in advance if this is planned!
Goodbye for now…
Thank you once again to everyone who, in reading along with us these past few months, has replicated the experiences of the Victorian readers who waited eagerly each week for the next chapter. We look forward to getting to do it all again next year!
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dickensdaily · 8 months
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If anybody reading Great Expectations thinks that the ending posted in Dickens Daily today is BS - Dickens thought so, too. It's not the ending he first wrote. He was pressured into it.
I do not say that this character development is impossible for Estella. I say that it is unsatisfying for it to happen offstage. I say that even if I saw it happening in front of me I'd resent it if the aroace sentiments Estella professed in earlier chapters - in the only honest, straightforward conversations she and Pip have - were solely imposed by the grinding trauma of her upbringing and the more overt suffering of being Mrs Drummle somehow softened her back to her "natural loving womanly" nature. I say that I'm from Missouri on this one - if you want me to believe this, you're gonna have to show me.
Assuming that Pip is not in a stable polycule with Herbert and Clara (a possibility that I doubt ever crossed Dickens's mind, but which to a modern reader looks like the best romantic option the narrative offers him), his conversation with Biddy sounds very like someone who has outlived the masochisticly romantic tendencies of his youth and settled into a comfortably celibate maturity. This seems a much healthier outcome than getting together with the object of his old obsession, with whom he never passed a happy hour.
We place a high value on romance, and Victorian society - and Dickens specifically - placed a high value on heterosexual domestic life based on a romantic sexual love; but these are not the only ways to be happy, and in fact striving to get them and insisting on not being happy till they are acquired has made many people very unhappy indeed over the years.
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dickensdaily · 8 months
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Tearing up at chapter 58 of Great Expectations...
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dickensdaily · 8 months
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I believe I have mentioned before that I love Wemmick.
Chapter after chapter of angst, of everything going wrong, kidnapping and wounding and death and arrest and hopes dashed, and now Wemmick asks Pip to take a walk. With a fishing pole. Halloa, here's a church, let's go in. Halloa, here's Miss Skiffins, let's have a wedding. Halloa, here's a ring!
Wemmick is a comic relief character, but that's not all he is. He's a hope character. He's an "all the same life goes on" character. When even Herbert is going to Cairo, his own wedding to Clara awaiting, vulturelike, the death of her demanding unworthy father, Wemmick and his Aged Parent and Miss Skiffins are getting their own lives together, in a ridiculous and straight-faced manner that you know they're all enjoying to the hilt. Life is not just a vale of tears.
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dickensdaily · 9 months
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Vote here: https://forms.gle/tWD2F6y5AHnmRyZV8
What the Dickens?
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There are 24 hours remaining to vote for our next book - only one can win!
Remember to take note of how long the wait will be for each option after we finish Great Expectations in August, as well as how long the serialisation will continue for!
Dombey and Son (October 1856/2023 to April 1848/2025) A compelling depiction of a man imprisoned by his own pride, Dombey and Son explores the devastating effects of emotional deprivation on a dysfunctional family. Paul Dombey runs his household as he runs his business: coldly, calculatingly and commercially. The only person he cares for is his little son, while his motherless daughter Florence is merely a ‘base coin that couldn’t be invested’. As Dombey’s callousness extends to others, including his defiant second wife Edith, he sows the seeds of his own destruction.
Little Dorrit (December 1855/2023 to June 1857/2025) A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens’s maturity. It follows Arthur Clennam who, returning to England after many years abroad, takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother’s seamstress, who was born and raised in the Marshalsea where her father has long been imprisoned for debt. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr Pancks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, to the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office and Merdle, an unscrupulous financier.
Martin Chuzzlewit (January 1843/2024 to July 1844/2025) Greed has led wealthy old Martin Chuzzlewit to become suspicious and misanthropic, leaving his grandson and name-sake to make his own way in the world. And so young Martin sets out from the Wiltshire home of his supposed champion, the scheming architect Pecksniff, to seek his fortune in America. In depicting Martin’s journey Dickens created many vividly realised figures, from Martin’s optimistic manservant Mark Tapley to the drunken and corrupt private nurse Mrs Gamp. With its portrayal of greed, blackmail and murder, and its searing satire on America, Dickens’s novel is a powerful and blackly comic story of hypocrisy and redemption.
Barnaby Rudge (February 1841/2024 to November 1841/2024) Set against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots of 1780, Barnaby Rudge is a story of mystery and suspense which begins with an unsolved double murder and goes on to involve conspiracy, blackmail, abduction and retribution. Through the course of the novel fathers and sons become opposed, apprentices plot against their masters and anti-Catholic mobs rampage through the streets. With its dramatic descriptions of public violence and private horror, its strange secrets and ghostly doublings, Barnaby Rudge is a powerful, disturbing blend of historical realism and Gothic melodrama.
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dickensdaily · 9 months
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What the Dickens?
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There are 24 hours remaining to vote for our next book - only one can win!
Remember to take note of how long the wait will be for each option after we finish Great Expectations in August, as well as how long the serialisation will continue for!
Dombey and Son (October 1856/2023 to April 1848/2025) A compelling depiction of a man imprisoned by his own pride, Dombey and Son explores the devastating effects of emotional deprivation on a dysfunctional family. Paul Dombey runs his household as he runs his business: coldly, calculatingly and commercially. The only person he cares for is his little son, while his motherless daughter Florence is merely a 'base coin that couldn't be invested'. As Dombey's callousness extends to others, including his defiant second wife Edith, he sows the seeds of his own destruction.
Little Dorrit (December 1855/2023 to June 1857/2025) A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens's maturity. It follows Arthur Clennam who, returning to England after many years abroad, takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother's seamstress, who was born and raised in the Marshalsea where her father has long been imprisoned for debt. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr Pancks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, to the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office and Merdle, an unscrupulous financier.
Martin Chuzzlewit (January 1843/2024 to July 1844/2025) Greed has led wealthy old Martin Chuzzlewit to become suspicious and misanthropic, leaving his grandson and name-sake to make his own way in the world. And so young Martin sets out from the Wiltshire home of his supposed champion, the scheming architect Pecksniff, to seek his fortune in America. In depicting Martin's journey Dickens created many vividly realised figures, from Martin's optimistic manservant Mark Tapley to the drunken and corrupt private nurse Mrs Gamp. With its portrayal of greed, blackmail and murder, and its searing satire on America, Dickens's novel is a powerful and blackly comic story of hypocrisy and redemption.
Barnaby Rudge (February 1841/2024 to November 1841/2024) Set against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots of 1780, Barnaby Rudge is a story of mystery and suspense which begins with an unsolved double murder and goes on to involve conspiracy, blackmail, abduction and retribution. Through the course of the novel fathers and sons become opposed, apprentices plot against their masters and anti-Catholic mobs rampage through the streets. With its dramatic descriptions of public violence and private horror, its strange secrets and ghostly doublings, Barnaby Rudge is a powerful, disturbing blend of historical realism and Gothic melodrama.
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dickensdaily · 9 months
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Vote here: https://forms.gle/tWD2F6y5AHnmRyZV8
We’re still voting to decide our next book here at Dickens Daily! Check the notes to find the poll to vote. Our options are as below, along with blurbs and the dates that they would go out.
The voting will close on July 4th 2023
Dombey and Son (October 1856/2023 to April 1848/2025)
A compelling depiction of a man imprisoned by his own pride, Dombey and Son explores the devastating effects of emotional deprivation on a dysfunctional family. Paul Dombey runs his household as he runs his business: coldly, calculatingly and commercially. The only person he cares for is his little son, while his motherless daughter Florence is merely a ‘base coin that couldn’t be invested’. As Dombey’s callousness extends to others, including his defiant second wife Edith, he sows the seeds of his own destruction.
Little Dorrit (December 1855/2023 to June 1857/2025) A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens’s maturity. It follows Arthur Clennam who, returning to England after many years abroad, takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother’s seamstress, who was born and raised in the Marshalsea where her father has long been imprisoned for debt. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr Pancks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, to the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office and Merdle, an unscrupulous financier.
Martin Chuzzlewit (January 1843/2024 to July 1844/2025) Greed has led wealthy old Martin Chuzzlewit to become suspicious and misanthropic, leaving his grandson and name-sake to make his own way in the world. And so young Martin sets out from the Wiltshire home of his supposed champion, the scheming architect Pecksniff, to seek his fortune in America. In depicting Martin’s journey Dickens created many vividly realised figures, from Martin’s optimistic manservant Mark Tapley to the drunken and corrupt private nurse Mrs Gamp. With its portrayal of greed, blackmail and murder, and its searing satire on America, Dickens’s novel is a powerful and blackly comic story of hypocrisy and redemption.
Barnaby Rudge (February 1841/2024 to November 1841/2024) Set against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots of 1780, Barnaby Rudge is a story of mystery and suspense which begins with an unsolved double murder and goes on to involve conspiracy, blackmail, abduction and retribution. Through the course of the novel fathers and sons become opposed, apprentices plot against their masters and anti-Catholic mobs rampage through the streets. With its dramatic descriptions of public violence and private horror, its strange secrets and ghostly doublings, Barnaby Rudge is a powerful, disturbing blend of historical realism and Gothic melodrama.
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