Happy Birthday Charles Dickens

Today cel­e­brates the 200^th anniver­sary of the birth of the world’s most beloved Charles Dick­ens. No book site can let the day pass with­out at least a word or two.  As a for­mer man­ager of a new and used book­store, it was my plea­sure to sell var­i­ous Dickens’ titles to blocks of stu­dents who would come a-​​complaining that they’d been assigned A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, or  Great Expec­ta­tions. I would try to con­vince them they were in for a treat, “Why the glum faces?” Of course I knew why the glum faces. Who likes to be told, “Here, read this, it’s good for you.” Dickens was for those stu­dents what lima beans con­tinue to be for me.  But I talked the good talk, told them about how rel­e­vant his writ­ing is for today’s reader. What could be more rel­e­vant than crooked bankers, cor­rupt politi­cians, an ever-​​widening gap between the rich and the poor and all those home­less street peo­ple? The only time they’d really perk up is when I’d tell them that when orig­i­nally published, Dickens was as pop­u­lar as Stephen King or J. K. Rowl­ing. The kids still wanted Cliffs Notes to go with the book. They stood by their com­plaints, the books were long and OMG his sen­tences were just as long. Not quite the sen­tence struc­ture for text mes­sag­ing. Ah, and Mr. Dick­ens thought poor Oliver had it tough.

My sec­ond com­ment is about my own col­lec­tion of Dick­ens. It’s not fancy, but intact. The col­lec­tion was pub­lished by P. F. Col­lier and Son in the early 1900’s. The books have red mock-​​linen boards with a slight emboss­ing, and gold print and more very slight emboss­ing on the spines. They were bought to be part of a high school grad­u­a­tion gift for my daugh­ter, but after bring­ing them home and going over the titles of unread Dick­ens, I ever so reluc­tantly decided to keep them for myself. I never told her, and the books I bought as a replace­ment her for grad­u­a­tion were actu­ally more valu­able than my Col­lier set, but I never told her. Oh, she saw my Dick­ens col­lec­tion. They were imme­di­ately put on my shelves. I never hid the fact that I pur­chased them, only for whom they had orig­i­nally been intended. She sel­dom reads my blogs (she does edit my reviews) so I’m not wor­ried she’ll find out. But just in case: if you hap­pen to read this Jacque­line, all thirty vol­umes are ear-​​marked for you in my will.  Happy Birth­day Charles Dickens.