Two years ago I brought the England sub-thread's attention to Charles Dickens' 210th birthday here:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/england/happy-210th-birthday-to-charles-dickens
and now it's two years later -- any interesting Dickensian movies appear in the interim?
How about visits to his birthplace in Portsmouth?
There's a museum there now:
This is a nice reminder of the great writer's birthday.
I encourage Forum members to visit the Charles Dickens Museum in London: https://dickensmuseum.com. I saw the outside of it when I visited London in 2010, but the museum was closed for renovations!
I read David Copperfield last year. I encourage readers to read it. It was the best of the five Dickens books I read.
and now it's two years later -- any interesting Dickensian movies
appear in the interim?
The Man Who Invented Christmas. The movie didn't come out in the past 2 years but I discovered it in that timeframe. It's kind of a loose biography on how he came to write A Christmas Carol. Speaking of, my most memorable version of that movie is still from my childhood with Disney's version staring Scrooge McDuck as Ebenezer Scrooge. Thinking back, it's interesting that I loved it but at the same time couldn't have cared less about the classics because they're sooo boring.
Just saw the museum in Portsmouth a few weeks ago. It’s on the potential list for May. Thank you!
We visited the Charles Dickens House Museum May 2023. It was very high on my list of must sees. I love his books and his story. It was worth the visit for me.
What the Dickens! If he’d been water, and a year equaled a degree in Fahrenheit, he’d be boiling.
Back at Christmas, I was looking up info on him, and among the “People Also Ask” tidbits that popped up were his Last Words. Sadly, he suffered a stroke at age 58, and collapsed. Lying on the floor, he said (perhaps making a report to himself on his situation), “On the ground.”
One of his better quotes was “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” His writings have lightened the burdens of countless people over the years. Happy birthday, Charles Dickens, and R.I.P.
The current generation of writers is still making creative use of Dickens, for sure --
for example
Barbara Kingsolver's "Demon Copperhead"
more here:
https://keepingupwiththepenguins.com/dickensian-novels/
The Artful Dickens: Tricks and Ploys of the Great Novelist
by John Mullan
The Mystery of Charles Dickens
by A.N. Wilson
