e a m harris

Dickens 200th anniversary celebrations go on

There are so many big events happening this year, many of them quite short-lived – particularly the sporting ones.

Charles Dickens at his desk

However the celebrations of the life and work of Charles Dickens continue. This is fitting: it wouldn’t do to try and fit a lifetime of work and so many major novels into a few days. The events are summarised on http://www.dickens2012.org/

The exhibition at the Museum of London on Dickens and London is nearing its end, but an interesting one on Dickens and the Visual Imagination is due to open at the University of Surrey later this month. It will coincide with a major academic conference on the same subject.

I have to admit that I’ve read very few of the novels. Most of my Dickens-consumption has been from BBC serialisations. The novels certainly make good television. As the advertising for the conference on Dickens and the Visual Imagination states, he was a very visual writer, so it’s not surprising that his work translates so well to the screen, and that it has inspired so many excellent illustrators. He has also inspired stamp designers, not just in Britain but around the world.

Although very much a man of his time, he also wrote the truth about real people and their problems that transcends time and place.

Picture from Wikipedia.