Happy 200th Birthday to the Inimitable Boz

Happy Birthday, Mr. Dickens!

Born on this date in 1812, Mr. Dickens has been delighting readers for over 150 years.

Dickens Novels I’ve Read: David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, Pickwick Papers, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend

DIckens Novels I Have Yet to Enjoy: Hard Times, Dombey and Son, Bleak House, The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Little Dorrit, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Favorite Dickens Hero: Pip, Great Expectations

Favorite Dickens Villain(ess): Madame Defarge, Tale of Two Cities

Favorite Tragic Scene: Mr. Peggotty searching for Littel Em’ly (Is that a scene or an episode?)

Favorite Comic Character: Mr. Micawber, David Copperfield

Favorite Comic Scene: Miss Betsy Trotter chasing the donkeys out of her yard, David Copperfield

Strangest Dickens Christmas Story We’ve Read: “The Poor Relation’s Story”

Best Dickens Novel I’ve Read: A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield is a close second.

Dickens-related posts at Semicolon:

LOST Reading Project: Our Mutual Friend by Charles DIckens.

Scrooge Goes to Church

Dickens Pro and Con on his Birthday.

Quotes and Links

Born February 7th

Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley

A Little More Dickens

Other DIckens-related links:
Mere Comments on Dickens’ Christianity.

A DIckens Filmography at Internet Film Database.

George Orwell: Essay on Charles DIckens.

Edgar Allan Poe Meets Charles Dickens.

An entire blog devoted to Mr. Dickens and his work: DIckensblog by Gina Dalfonzo.

And finally, here’s a re-post of my own Dickens Quiz. Can you match the quotation with the Dickens novel that it comes from?

1. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

2. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”

3. “I would rather, I declare, have been a pig-faced lady, than be exposed to such a life as this!”

4. “It’s over and can’t be helped, and that’s one consolation as they always says in Turkey, ven they cuts the wrong man’s head off.”

5. “If the law supposes that,’ said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass–a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience–by experience.”

6. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”

7. “We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.”

8. “It is a sensation not experienced by many mortals,” said he, “to be looking into a churchyard on a wild windy night, and to feel that I no more hold a place among the living than these dead do, and even to know that I lie buried somewhere else, as they lie buried here. Nothing uses me to it. A spirit that was once a man could hardly feel stranger or lonelier, going unrecognized among mankind, than I feel.”

(HINT: these come from the eight Dickens novels that I have read. Which is from which?)

2 thoughts on “Happy 200th Birthday to the Inimitable Boz

  1. I’ve read David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol (I think — it may just be so familiar I think I have) and Great Expectations, but I only know the answers to 3 of the quiz questions. #1 is David Copperfield, I’m pretty sure; #2 is A Tale of Two Cities, and #6 is A Christmas Carol.

    A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite, with David Copperfield as a close second as well.

    My favorite hero is Sydney Carton though (or maybe because) he didn’t start out as a hero. But David Copperfield is a close second there as well. I so agree about the most tragic and comic scenes.

    So, which is your favorite film version of A Christmas Carol? Mine is the one with George C. Scott.

  2. I need to read Our Mutual Friend. The DVD is languishing in my collection waiting for me to read the book first.

    Great Expectations was my first DIckens. I love thumbing through the book and looking at my juvenile handwritten notes.

    Funny story: I read Hard Times and *I declare* it wasn’t until the final chapter that I realized I had read it before. Crazy!

    NN is on my shelf waiting to be read. Wait. I have a complete collection I picked up at a garage sale for $10. But the type is pretty small. I may end up reading Dickens on Kindle.

    Thank you for a lovely post, Sherry. You rock the reading world.

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