The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dickens

The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dickens

Author: Brian Murray

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1441154256

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The Bedside Dickens provides a lively look at this great novelist's life and career. It sheds light on his role as a polemicist and journalist and explores the way his work was long informed by his Christian faith. It also reveals his most persistent literary themes and provides a vivid sense of how, among his contemporaries, Dickens' vast success-and his "radical" politics-provoked both admiration and scorn. Dickens, this study reminds us, saw life as a battle, but as both a novelist and journalist he sought to provide a more hopeful worldview. He repeatedly satirized vice and folly, even as he urged his readers and the leaders of his day to be less selfish and narrow and to "do good always." Chapters and topics include: Dickens and Animals; Christmas Stories; The Magnetizer; Dickens vs. Thackeray; A Christian Writer; Dickens Down Under; What Dickens Read; Dickens and Spontaneous Combustion; Dickens and Journalism; Dickens on the Couch.


The Daily Charles Dickens

The Daily Charles Dickens

Author: Charles Dickens

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 022656374X

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A charming memento of the Victorian era’s literary colossus, The Daily Charles Dickens is a literary almanac for the ages. Tenderly and irreverently anthologized by Dickens scholar James R. Kincaid, this collection mines the British author’s beloved novels and Christmas stories as well as his lesser-known sketches and letters for “an around-the-calendar set of jolts, soothings, blandishments, and soarings.” A bedside companion to dip into year round, this book introduces each month with a longer seasonal quote, while concise bits of wisdom and whimsy mark each day. Hopping gleefully from Esther Summerson’s abandonment by her mother in Bleak House to a meditation on the difficult posture of letter-writing in The Pickwick Papers, this anthology displays the wide range of Dickens’s stylistic virtuosity—his humor and his deep tragic sense, his ear for repetition, and his genius at all sorts of voices. Even the devotee will find between these pages a mix of old friends and strangers—from Oliver Twist and Ebenezer Scrooge to the likes of Lord Coodle, Sir Thomas Doodle, Mrs. Todgers, and Edwin Drood—as well as a delightful assortment of the some of the novelist’s most famous, peculiar, witty, and incisive passages, tailored to fit the season. To give one particularly apt example: David Copperfield blunders, in a letter of apology to Agnes Wickfield, “I began one note, in a six-syllable line, ‘Oh, do not remember’—but that associated itself with the fifth of November, and became an absurdity.” Never Pecksniffian or Gradgrindish, this daily dose of Dickens crystallizes the novelist’s agile humor and his reformist zeal alike. This is a book to accompany you through the best of times and the worst of times.


The Happy Prisoner

The Happy Prisoner

Author: Monica Dickens

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2012-10-30

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 1448210224

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It is the end of WW II and the household of Mrs. North, a well-to-do widow with a country cottage, is very busy. War circumstances brought both of her daughters home: loud but good-hearted tomboy, Violet, and highly-strung and over sensitive Heather with her two small children. Mrs. North is also taking care of her young niece, Evelyn, a lively child who loves to play on the local farm and has a great passion for animals. But at the center of all this is Oliver, Mrs. North's only son who lost his leg during the war service abroad. Recovering from his injuries, bed-ridden Oliver has nothing better to do but observe the busy lives of the people around him. Treated as a hero and a confidant by all the women in his family, Oliver begins to enjoy his new role as a self-proclaimed counselor. Due to his advice, Violet, an independent spinster, unexpectedly accepts the marriage proposal from a local farmer. Her wedding is a success and Violet finds a new happiness in her marriage, but soon Oliver's meddling in his family affairs goes too far. Will his risky instructions save or ruin Heather's marriage, which is at the brink of crisis, when her husband comes back from Australia after a few years of separation? Will Oliver learn to accept his new circumstances? Will he finally face to the reality and start to rebuild his own life? In this compendium plot, Monica Dickens, with her typical attention to detail, humor and talent for creating vivid characters, explores complicated life stories of the close-knit family and their friends at the end of the war. The Happy Prisoner was first published in 1946.


Mr. Dickens and His Carol

Mr. Dickens and His Carol

Author: Samantha Silva

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Published: 2017-10-31

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1250154030

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“A charming, comic, and ultimately poignant story about the creation of the most famous Christmas tale ever written. It’s as foggy and haunted and redemptive as the original; it’s all heart, and I read it in a couple of ebullient, Christmassy gulps.” —Anthony Doerr, #1 New York Times bestselling author of All The Light We Cannot See Laced with humor, rich historical detail from Charles Dickens’ life, and clever winks to his work, Samantha Silva's Mr. Dickens and His Carol is an irresistible new take on a cherished classic. Charles Dickens is not feeling the Christmas spirit. His newest book is an utter flop, the critics have turned against him, relatives near and far hound him for money. While his wife plans a lavish holiday party for their ever-expanding family and circle of friends, Dickens has visions of the poor house. But when his publishers try to blackmail him into writing a Christmas book to save them all from financial ruin, he refuses. And a serious bout of writer’s block sets in. Frazzled and filled with self-doubt, Dickens seeks solace in his great palace of thinking, the city of London itself. On one of his long night walks, in a once-beloved square, he meets the mysterious Eleanor Lovejoy, who might be just the muse he needs. As Dickens’ deadlines close in, Eleanor propels him on a Scrooge-like journey that tests everything he believes about generosity, friendship, ambition, and love. The story he writes will change Christmas forever.


The Dickens Boy

The Dickens Boy

Author: Thomas Keneally

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-03-08

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1982169168

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The award-winning author of modern classics such as Schindler’s List and Napoleon’s Last Island is at his triumphant best with this “engrossing and transporting” (Financial Times) novel about the adventures of Charles Dickens’s son in the Australian Outback during the 1860s. Edward Dickens, the tenth child of England’s most famous author Charles Dickens, has consistently let his parents down. Unable to apply himself at school and adrift in life, the teenaged boy is sent to Australia in the hopes that he can make something of himself—or at least fail out of the public eye. He soon finds himself in the remote Outback, surrounded by Aboriginals, colonials, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women. Determined to prove to his parents and more importantly, himself, that he can succeed in this vast and unfamiliar wilderness, Edward works hard at his new life amidst various livestock, bushrangers, shifty stock agents, and frontier battles. By reimagining the tale of a fascinating yet little-known figure in history, this “roguishly tender coming-of-age story” (Booklist) offers penetrating insights into Colonialism and the fate of Australia’s indigenous people, and a wonderfully intimate portrait of Charles Dickens, as seen through the eyes of his son.


Osler's Bedside Library

Osler's Bedside Library

Author: Michael A. LaCombe

Publisher: ACP Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 193446547X

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A unique volume featuring excerpts from the literary masterpieces Osler himself recommended to his students and colleagues, plus 20 other great works chosen by today's physicians. Each excerpt is accompanied by commentary from a leading scholar in medical humanities.


DICKENS'S LONDON - Premium Collection of 11 Novels & 80+ Tales (Illustrated)

DICKENS'S LONDON - Premium Collection of 11 Novels & 80+ Tales (Illustrated)

Author: Charles Dickens

Publisher: e-artnow

Published: 2017-02-28

Total Pages: 5866

ISBN-13: 8026873645

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This carefully crafted ebook: “DICKENS'S LONDON” is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Novels The Pickwick Papers Oliver Twist Nicholas Nickleby The Old Curiosity Shop Barnaby Rudge Martin Chuzzlewit David Copperfield Little Dorrit A Tale of Two Cities Great Expectations Our Mutual Friend Short Stories Sketches by Boz The Beadle. The Parish Engine. The Schoolmaster. The Curate. The Old Lady. The Half-pay Captain The Four Sisters The Election for Beadle The Broker's Man The Ladies' Societies Our Next-door Neighbour The Streets – morning The Streets – night Shops and their Tenants Scotland Yard Seven Dials Meditations in Monmouth-Street Hackney-coach Stands Doctors' Commons London Recreations The River Astley's Greenwich Fair Private Theatres Vauxhall Gardens by Day Early Coaches Omnibuses The Last Cab-driver, and the First Omnibus cad A Parliamentary Sketch Public Dinners The First of May Brokers' and Marine-store Shops Gin-shops The Pawnbroker's Shop Criminal Courts A Visit to Newgate Thoughts about People A Christmas Dinner The New Year Miss Evans and the Eagle The Parlour Orator The Hospital Patient The Misplaced attachment of Mr. John Dounce The Mistaken Milliner The Dancing Academy Shabby-Genteel People Making a Night of It The Prisoners' Van The Boarding-house Mr. Minns and his Cousin Sentiment The Tuggses at Ramsgate Horatio Sparkins The Black Veil The Steam Excursion The Great Winglebury Duel Mrs. Joseph Porter A Passage in the Life of Mr. Watkins Tottle The Bloomsbury Christening The Drunkard's death Sketches of Young Gentlemen Sketches of Young Couples Master Humphrey's Clock Sunday Under Three Heads Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.