"GOD BLESS US EVERYONE!"

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

RING IN THE NEW!

"...So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you! So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our great Creator formed them to enjoy!"

Charles Dickens – The Chimes (1843)

WHAT THE *******?

HAPPY 200th BIRTHDAY
to
CHARLES DICKENS
(7 February 1812–9 June 1870)

"He is a wonderfully accomplished man — most extraordinarily accomplished — reads — hem — reads every novel that comes out; I mean every novel that — hem — that has any fashion in it, of course. The fact is, that he did find so much in the books he read, applicable to his own misfortunes, and did find himself in every respect so much like the heroes — because of course he is conscious of his own superiority, as we all are, and very naturally — that he took to scorning everything, and became a genius."

- Miss Knag speaking of her brother, Mr. Mortimer Knag,
a stationer and keeper of a small circulating library, in
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9)

Caricature of Charles Dickens by Court Jones.

HAPPY, HAPPY, CHRISTMAS!

"Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!"

- Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (1836)

NIGHT LIGHT

Charles Dickens in 'Night Walks'...

The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed.


'Night Walks' was originally published in the weekly magazine edited by Dickens, All the Year Round, and was later reprinted in the collection of essays and sketches, The Uncommercial Traveller.

This evocative portrait of London after dark as viewed during Dickens' wanderings as an insomniac can now be found in volume 88 of Penguin Books' Great Ideas series, Charles Dickens – Night Walks.

Image: 'Hawaiian Moon' by Elizabeth Hoskinson