The Dickens Society

Tag: Christmas

The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff—TV Christmas Special Review

This post is contributed by Mads Golding. Mads is a playwright and writer currently pursuing an MA in English literature at Loyola University, Chicago. Her research interests include Dickens, Shakespeare, and theater. Mads currently serves as a member of the communications committee for The Dickens...

“Is there no dinner theatre?!”: Little Dickens and a Dickensian Christmas

This post has been contributed by Catherine Quirk (@quirk_catherine), McGill University. Read her previous posts here, here, and here. In December 2019, theatre-goers at Montréal’s Centaur Theatre found themselves exposed to a new kind of Dickensian Christmas. From 19 November to 21 December, “Master Marionette...

Crossing the Borders: Windows and Thresholds in Dickens’s Christmas Stories of the 1840s

This is Part Two of a post contributed by Renata Goroshkova, St. Petersburg State University, Russia. Find Part One here. The concept of the window as a frame through which the artist sees what will be depicted in his work first appeared in the work...

Christmas Music in A Christmas Carol in Prose

This post has been contributed by Renata Goroshkova, St. Petersburg State University, Russia. Read Renata’s other posts here and here. Charles Dickens came to reading age during the blossoming of Romanticism (1, p. 31), and Romantic ideas were the ground on which Charles Dickens was...

The Reception of Charles Dickens’s Christmas Stories of the 1840s in Russia up to 1917

Contributed by Renata Goroshkova, a teaching assistant from St. Petersburg State University, Russia. She is now finishing her dissertation on Dickens’s Christmas stories of the 1840s. Charles Dickens has always been highly popular in Russia. His works appeared in Russia as translated versions or recasts...

Man and Meat: A Christmas Carol’s Cannibalistic Menace in Historical Perspective

This post has been contributed by Lydia Craig. First the villain and then the hero of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843), the cold-hearted and wealthy businessman Ebenezer Scrooge initially refuses to empathize with or financially contribute towards the nourishment of London’s poor until bullied,...

The Man Who Invented Christmas to Become a Feature Film

This post has been contributed by Gina Dalfonzo. In 2011, historian and author Les Standiford published The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits. The book was an insightful, very thorough exploration of the...

Past, Present, and Future: The Dickensian (Christmas) Spirit

This post has been contributed by Catherine Quirk. In The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge (1990), Paul Davis argues that A Christmas Carol adapts itself to each historical era; that is, since its publication subsequent generations of readers, play-goers, listeners, and viewers have been...

Gift-Giving in the Proper Dickens Spirit

This post has been contributed by Clara Defilippis.   Throughout Little Dorrit, Dickens peppers his narrative with individuals who give and receive favors and gifts. In his treatment of presents and tokens within the novel, Dickens contrasts the prideful and manipulative behavior of Mr. Dorrit...

How Dickens Invented Christmas — and Why it Matters

Professor Goldie Morgentaler recently gave this public lecture on A Christmas Carol at the City Hall in Lethbridge. Her talk lays out the history of A Christmas Carol, which was not intended as a feel-good fairy-tale but as an enraged tirade against the evils of...
The Dickens Society

The purpose of the Dickens Society is to conduct, further, and support research, publication, instruction, and general interest in the life, times, and literature of Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870).