Dickens

If you have a look through the A-Z of authors you’ll notice that there aren’t any authors of the classics listed on there. That’s mainly because I don’t really do what’s regarded as classic literature any more – I much prefer to read more contemporary fiction instead. Don’t get me wrong though, I have read a lot of the classics: I just don’t tend to read them nowadays.

Apart, that is, from Charles Dickens, who I regard as the greatest novelist in the history of the world, ever.

Dickens, who is so very very special that I’ve given him a page all to himself.

Little Known Facts about Dickens and Me

. The first Dickens book I ever read was Bleak House, which I studied for A’ level English. I’ve been a fan of his work ever since.

. I used to be a member (for a short while anyway) of the Dickens Fellowship, or the Dickens Fan Club as I prefer to call it.

. I grew up in the Devon village that Dickens’ parents used to live in. Here’s an extract from Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens:

“In the course of the year he was taken into Devonshire to select a home for his father, on the removal of the latter (who had long given up his reporting duties) from his London residence; and this he found in a cottage at Alphington, near Exeter, where he placed the elder Dickens with his wife and their youngest son.”

. I once slept in the very same house that Dickens bought/rented for his parents! (I was about 8, and it was my first sleepover at a friend’s. I remember it thundered and I was very scared and wanted to go home. I didn’t find out until many years later that it was that house [it's now got a blue plaque on the wall, but I don't think it did back then]) Here’s an extract from Dickens’ letter to Forster (5th march 1839):

“I took a little house for them this morning and if they are not pleased with it I shall be grievously disappointed. Exactly a mile beyond the city on the Plymouth road there are two white cottages: one is theirs and the other belongs to their landlady…. The Paint and paper throughout is new and fresh and cheerful-looking, the place is clean beyond all description, and the neighbourhood I suppose the most beautiful in this most beautiful of English counties.”

. I still haven’t read all of Dickens’ novels, but I’m getting there steadily.

So far I’ve read:

1) Sketches by Boz

2) The Adventures of Oliver Twist

3) The Old Curiosity Shop

4) The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit

5) Dombey and Son

6) David Copperfield

7) Bleak House

8 ) Little Dorrit

9) A Tale of Two Cities

10) Great Expectations

11) Our Mutual Friend

12) The Christmas Books

. To get at least a bit of the atmosphere right, I only ever read Dickens in the winter.

. I worry about reading The Mystery of Edwin Drood because I suspect I’ll become one of those people determined to write the “proper” ending to it.

. The oldest book I own is an 1858 copy of Sketches by Boz. I paid 50p for it in a second-hand bookshop in Sheffield about 25 years ago. It’s probably not worth much more than that today, but to me it’s very special simply because it’s a Dickens book that was published and on sale while Dickens was still alive.

. It’s been open for a few years now but I’m still undecided as to whether I should pay a visit to Dickens World or not.