The Dickens bicentenary
| AN OUTSIDERS VIEW |
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| Ken Fuller |
Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, the foremost English novelist of the Victorian era. The acclaim greeting Dickens was — and still is — international in scope. Walk into any large bookstore in the Philippines, and Dickens will be there.
The author of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, The Pickwick Papers and The Old Curiosity Shop is chiefly remembered for two achievements, the first of which was the creation of a range of unforgettable characters, some of which were taken from life.
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” This was the memorable dictum of Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, a character modeled on Dickens’s own father who, like Micawber, served a stretch in a debtors’ prison. Then there is the odious Uriah Heep, also from Copperfield, the hilarious Cockney nurse Sarah Gamp from Martin Chuzzlewit, Sam Weller (whose father was also modeled on the Dickens parent) from Pickwick, Fagin and the Artful Dodger from Oliver Twist, the much-loved Mr. Pickwick himself and many, many more..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20120207com5.html
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