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Charles Dickens was born nearly 200 years ago, on February 7, 1812. His bicentenary is being celebrated in a big way on screen and stage, in print, street festivals and exhibitions.
A website – http://www.dickens2012.org/ - has been set up to detail events, activities, projects, festivals, performances and exhibitions that commemorate the author’s life and work. "Although a writer from the Victorian era, Dickens’s work transcends his time, language and culture. He remains a massive contemporary influence throughout the world and his writings continue to inspire film, TV, art, literature, artists and academia," the website states. The simplest, best and cheapest way to honour this anniversary is, of course, just to read or re-read Dickens’s books. It is in his writing that he lives and it is all easily available. In England, where the author lived and wrote his novels, the BBC is going Charles Dickens crazy before his bicentenary. The first of its adaptations – Great Expectations and parody The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff – were shown on TV last month. An adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens’s unfinished novel, was aired in January.
The first major exhibition on the author in over 40 years opened at the Museum of London last month and it will run till June. Recreating the atmosphere of Victorian London through sound and projections, visitors are taken on a haunting journey to discover the city that inspired Dickens’s writings. Paintings, photographs, costumes and objects illustrate themes that the writer wove into his works, such as poverty and childhood. Rarely seen manuscripts, including Bleak House and David Copperfield – written in the author’s own hand – offer clues to his creative genius. During the visit, fans of the author discover his childhood experiences of London, while he worked in a blacking factory while his father was locked away in a debtors’ prison. The great social questions of the 19th century, including wealth and poverty, prostitution, childhood mortality and philanthropy, are also examined, all of which set the scene for Dickens’s greatest works.
A number of events will also take place at the Charles Dickens Museum in London. It was here – No. 48 Doughty Street – that the author lived from 1837 until 1839. He described it as "my house in town". Two of his daughters were born here, his sister-in-law Mary died aged 17 and some of his best-loved novels were written here, including Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. However, Dickens required more space for his growing family and moved to 1, Devonshire Terrace in 1839. The house at Doughty Street remained a residential property, but was threatened with demolition in 1923 when the Dickens Fellowship acquired it. The museum was opened in 1925 and has the world’s finest Dickens-related collection.
Dickens was perhaps the first author to describe contemporary London in the 19th century and its profound impact on society – in particular on ordinary people. London was Dickens’s inspiration. He knew its alleys and streets better than anyone. His writings remain relevant today, especially for the rapidly developing mega-cities around the world, which face many of the problems and challenges that impacted Victorian London 150 years ago. Clearly, Dickens is too good to be left languishing in the past. He belongs in the here and now.
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Dickens on Screen – the
largest ever retrospective of Dickens adaptations on film and TV – has
been organised by the British Film Institute (BFI). The BFI will screen
classics from David Lean’s Great Expectations to Ralph Thomas’s
A Tale of Two Cities, starring Dirk Bogarde, from January 1 to
March 23 in London. The current outbreak of Dickens mania will also see
a new version of Great Expectations, starring Helena Bonham
Carter as Miss Havisham and Ralph Fiennes as Magwitch with a new
"thriller" ending written by David Nicholls. It is due for
release this autumn.
Highlights of the
exhibition include an innovative audio-visual experience bringing to
life the desk and chair where Dickens wrote some of his greatest works,
and a specially commissioned film by one of the UK’s leading
documentary film-makers, William Raban, which explores the similarities
between London after dark today and the night-time city described by
Dickens over 150 years ago.
Even though Dickens’s
writing career ran from 1836 to 1870, his characters live on as familiar
friends to people all over the world. Millions of people sympathise with
Oliver "asking for more" or Sydney Carton claiming "it is
a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done". We read
Dickens not just because he was a man of his own times, but because he
is a man of our times as well. We read Dickens because his perception
and investigation of the human psyche is deep, precise, and
illuminating, and because he tells us things about ourselves by
portraying personality traits and habits that might seem all too
familiar.