"On the clock striking twelve he appeared slightly agitated, but he soon recovered, walked twice or thrice along the coach house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed 'Halloa old girl!' (his favorite expression) and died... The children seem rather glad of it. He bit their ankles, but that was play..." So wrote Charles Dickens, describing the death of his pet raven "Grip," in a letter to a friend. Grip has an interesting legacy. Having served as an eponymous character in Dickens' Barnaby Rudge [full text] and subsequently inspiring Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven [full text], Grip has the distinction of being named a literary landmark. His taxidermied body is on display in the Rare Book Department at the Philadelphia Free Library.
posted on Aug 13, 2008 - View this thread

An informative, gossipy and surprisingly engaging 6-page exploration of the life of Charles Dickens, including his up-and-down relationship with the U.S. press, his inexcusable behavior during his messy and very public separation from his wife, the "histrionic flair" of his performance career, and, of course, his works, including the one George Bernard Shaw called "a more seditious book than Das Kapital." Lots of interesting images, too.
posted on May 24, 2007 - View this thread

There are many ways to learn about the life and times of Charles Dickens. There are numerous web pages, biographies and movies. But can any of them compare to the immersion experience of Dickens World. Don't miss the many attractions. The kids will love playing in Fagin's Den while you visit the Haunted House of Ebenezer Scrooge. And don't leave too early or you'll miss the evening's entertainment. "A series of 'burlesque' evening dinner shows are being especially created to provide a nightly menu of 'naughty delights' in the 'Free and Easy' Victorian Music Hall."
posted on Apr 14, 2007 - View this thread

Huck Finn, Heart of Darkness, A Tale of Two Cities, and others - free audio books. Text and audio on the web, or downloadable mp3s with embedded text.
posted on Mar 4, 2007 - View this thread

An Interactive Map of Charles Dickens' London. After you have had a chance to peruse the map, see then and now pictures or take a quiz about Dickens' London. If you want to see it with your own eyes, take a walking tour. Or if you are daring enough, you can try to virtually survive Dickens' London.
posted on Feb 14, 2007 - View this thread

Victorian Workhouses
I sometimes look up at the bit of blue sky
High over my head, with a tear in my eye.
Surrounded by walls that are too high to climb,
Confined like a felon without any crime...
posted on Sep 18, 2006 - View this thread

Flaubert on Structural Unity. "I’ve just read 'Pickwick' by Dickens. Do you know it? Some bits are magnificent; but what a defective structure! All English writers are like that. Walter Scott apart, they lack composition. This is intolerable for us Latins". Extracts from the letters of Flaubert (via the very awesome book coolie)
posted on Jul 29, 2005 - View this thread

The Dickens Project. Today is also the birthday of Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870), English novelist, who in his American Notes of 1842 made numerous scathing observations about speech patterns he had noted during his five-month visit to the United States that year. He wrote, for example, that once he had left the more cosmopolitan areas of New York and Boston, nasal drawls were the rule, the grammar was "more than doubtful," and the "oddest vulgarisms" were "received idioms." he was so caustic that the normally mild and diplomatic Ralph Waldo Emerson was moved to defend his countrymen from Dickens's characterizations: "No such conversations ever occur in this country, in real life, as he relates. He has picked up and noted with eagerness each odd local phase that he met with, and when he had a story to relate, has joined them together, so that the result is the broadest caricature."

YEAH Ralph! Back in the day, that was what we would now call a "Verbal Beatdown" (Nas lyrics, probably NSFW)
posted on Feb 7, 2005 - View this thread

Diagnosing Tiny Tim An interesting parlor game among pediatricians is to determine the ailment that afflicted the character Tiny Tim from a Christmas Carol. The most likely suspects include renal tubular acidosis or a vitamin D deficiency due to excessive London industrial smog, both of which result in rickets. (This would explain why Tiny Tim needed a crutch). Given that Tiny Tim's condition was likely curable if Scrooge paid Cratchit more money, this has inspired one right-wing contrarian to argue that Scrooge should have worked a little Malthusian magic by letting Tiny Tim die.
posted on Dec 25, 2003 - View this thread