We’d like to say a big thank you to all the reading groups who have been our Dickens Champions this year – for all your reading, enthusiasm, inspiration and endurance.
There have been garden and birthday parties, Dickens’ walks, trips to the theatre and visits to museums, Olympic swimming, a Dickens Reading Group Day and, of course, lots of reading, debating and reviewing. We’ve enjoyed it, we hope you have too.
Anne Marie from the Mitchell Classics Book Group shares the thoughts of the group as they reach the end of their year of reading Dickens.
For the Mitchell Classics Book Group, being selected as Dickens’ Champions and having the opportunity to read and comment on several of his works during the bicentenary year was a very welcome opportunity. We had read some Dickens together before – The Pickwick Papers, A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities. We had enjoyed all of these – although more by some of the group than by others – and they had generated lively discussions.
A fresher and wider perspective
We were excited to find that our allocated novels were: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Hard Times, Barnaby Rudge and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. For the majority of us, Oliver Twist and David Copperfield as some of us remembered (in my case, dimly remembered) these texts from our school days.
The opportunity to re-read these gave a fresher and wider perspective – reading less for the plot and being much more aware of the wonderful characterisations and the magnificent use of language. Dickens’ actor’s eye for mannerisms (the quirkier the better) and his actor’s ear for tone and pitch (and dialect) in speech springs off the page and captures us up in the story. No wonder he has been so often adapted for both the big and the small screen.
A politically and socially aware writer
Reading Hard Times was a new experience for most of us and one which drew Dickens away from his beloved London. We felt that this revealed a more politically and socially aware writer – and one who would have no shortage of material in our own increasingly austere times. Barnaby Rudge was also a first time read for most of us. One of his rare historical novels, it shed light on an aspect of British history with which few of us were familiar. And intriguingly, how did Dickens ever find the time to complete all the research for the background to this novel?
A popular read
Our year of reading Dickens closed with his final and unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. A new direction – almost a ‘whodunit’ – and a very popular read for the group. Already ill and tired, Dickens loses none of his story-telling power and has so many plot lines dangling that we all had fun second guessing how this might have been finished.
Few writers are so consistently rewarding
So thank you for this opportunity. It has been a very enjoyable one. For sheer entertainment, few writers are so consistently rewarding as Dickens. We have loved his storytelling powers, the range of his themes, the eerie relevance of so much of his material to our own times. We have loved his delightfully eccentric characters (no one does eccentricity better than Dickens) and we have been nauseated by some of his simpering pubescent heroines.
What next? We are all looking forward to reading Ronald Frame’s Havisham and
having a chance to hear the author at the Mitchell Library too. Dickens, however, doesn’t appear on our reading list for 2013 (Mary, for one, will breathe a sigh of relief) and perhaps we need a little break from him. I plan however to seek out some of his other writings and maybe his letters too. There’s enough of them to keep me busy for years to come.
Get involved
Read Hollingbourne Reading Group’s and Belper Book Chat’s thoughts on a year of reading Dickens.
Read our Dickens Champions’ blog posts as they read and reviewed their way through Dickens in 2012.
We’d like to say a big thank you to all the reading groups who have been our Dickens Champions this year – for all your reading, enthusiasm, inspiration and endurance!
