The Pickwick Papers, one of the most honored first novels of all time, was conceived as a showcase for the comic etchings of the celebrated illustrator
Robert Seymour. His publishers tapped a 24 year old journalist named Charles Dickens (their third choice) to provide the humorous "commentary" linking the pictures, which were to depict the hunting mishaps of a club of cockney sportsmen. Dickens, who knew nothing about hunting, ignored the prospectus and wrote his own way forward. As it became clear that Seymour was ill-equipped to depict
the darker turns of Dickens' imagination, illustrator and writer fell into
a conflict which ended in horror.
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posted by Iridic
on Apr 30, 2013 -
14 comments
The earliest surviving Charles Dickens film, thought lost since 1954, has been re-found in the British Film Institute's archive.
The Death of Poor Joe (
YouTube HD,
IMDB,
Wikipedia), a one minute-long silent film based on an episode in Dickens' novel
Bleak House, was filmed in 1901.
posted by stbalbach
on Mar 11, 2012 -
8 comments
170 years ago, a gala ball was held
in his honor on Valentine's Day. Flattered by New York City's elites, the author considered the occasion the finest moment of his life, particularly since he felt the United States was an ideal example of how Britain's class-bound society should live. But in the following weeks, when besieged by fawning groupies and actually meeting directly with the less than well-heeled folk of the New World, that his disposition turned sour.
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posted by Smart Dalek
on Feb 14, 2012 -
16 comments
Over 2000 classic short stories from
American Literature as well as an option to sign up for a
short story of the day rss feed. Among the authors on offer are Kate Chopin, Saki, O. Henry, Louisa May Alcott, Ambrose Bierce, H. P. Lovecraft, Jack London, James Joyce, Willa Cather, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Dickens, Herman Hesse, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Honoré de Balzac, Edith Warton, P. G. Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf, Langston Hughes, Leo Tolstoy, Aldous Huxley, Roald Dahl, Henry James, Katherine Mansfield and I could keep going for a while. The point is, there's over 2000 short stories in there.
posted by Kattullus
on Feb 17, 2008 -
31 comments
