Victorian literature

Wednesday

Oliver Soden

A Charles Dickens patchwork

What connects pistachios, hay, and Mr. Krook in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House? Asked this question on a recent episode of the British TV quiz show Only Connect, the contestants noted all three are prone to spontaneous combustion, although, as one player exclaimed, “I can’t imagine that happening in a novel, but things were different back then.” Novels contain novel imaginings, but people back then were equally skeptical. Dickens eventually had to defend the death of Krook, the sozzled owner of a rag-and-bottle shop, by listing the historical precedents. He knew a thing or two about a rapid reaction between fuel and oxygen that emits a fiery blaze of energy. By night he walked and walked, to still his beating mind.

dickens

Tuesday

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

The supreme conjuror Charles Dickens weaves his magic spell

From our UK edition

As Charles Dickens lay in his coffin, his will was read out to the assembled mourners. ‘I conjure my friends,’ he sternly instructed them, ‘on no account to make me the subject of any monument, memorial or testimonial whatever.’ It’s an appeal that later generations have studiously ignored, as can be seen in the piles of commemorative merchandise that are available to purchase online. These range from a fully poseable Dickens action figure (‘with quill pen and removable hat’) to a T-shirt featuring his face and the slogan ‘I put the lit in literature’. They can also be seen in the shelfloads of biographies and critical works published every year.