A Charles Dickens Death Chart September 9, 2013 – Posted in: infographics

Just how cruel was Charles Dickens to his characters? Thanks to this handy graphic by Melissa Symanczyk we can now follow death through his major works. In all, 53 people and 2 dogs have succumbed to the ultimate end via Dickens’ hand. Symanczyk even awards a prize for best death with the honors going to the spontaneous human combustion event in Bleak House. The two deadliest? Bleak House & David Copperfield with seven fatalities in each. First Edition of Bleak House,…

Charles Dickens’ Model for the Modern Rehab Facility: Victorian Health Care Reform April 7, 2010

On November 29, 1842, London’s Morning Chronicle published a short, unusual piece by Charles Dickens, already a celebrated writer and novelist, titled The Sanatorium. Written shortly after Dickens’s return from his first American tour, it reflected both his deep and lasting interest in public affairs and his fascination with medicine and the medical profession, particularly mental illness, detailed descriptions of which form central passages in several of Dickens’s novels. Thomas Chapman was chairman of the…

Slumming With Charles Dickens: New York Library Relives His American Tours March 17, 2010

Getting A Head Start On The Competition: Union College’s Dickens in America. Although 2012 marks the bicentennial of Charles Dickens‘s birth, Union College in Schenectady, New York is jumping the gun with an exhibit at the Schaffer Library entitled Dickens in America. The Schaffer is showcasing several rare volumes of the author’s works, including a recently acquired first edition of A Christmas Carol. The exhibit highlights the Victorian novelist’s celebrated lecture tours of the United…

A "Read" Letter Day For Dickens January 29, 2010

Mr. Charles Dickens’s Last Reading.(George C. Leighton for The Illustrated London News, Vol.56, 1870.) Of the greatest writer of the Elizabethan age, William Shakespeare, so little is known that many doubt him to be the true author of his incomparable plays. At the other end of the biographical spectrum is the greatest writer of the Victorian age, Charles Dickens. As British writer Simon Callow put it: “Of Shakespeare, we know next to nothing; of Dickens…

Charles Dickens’ Deluxe Dental Tool Is Top Pick at Bonham’s December 16, 2009

Charles Dickens’ Deluxe Dental Hygiene Solution Charles Dickens’ toothpick sold at Bonham’s-NY yesterday for $9,150, including the buyer’s premium. The pre-sale estimate for the pick of the litterateur was $3000-$5000. Exhibited at Chapin Library, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, and at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, in the Spring of 1970, the toothpick was sent to auction by its owners, the family collection of Barnes & Noble. Bonham’s catalog description noted: “Dickens’ toothpick, manufactured by…