Today is the 212th birthday of Charles Dickens, novelist extraordinaire. Dickens wrote 14 novels between 1836 and 1865, in the process becoming one of the most famous writers in the world. His novels have never been out of print, his name has been transformed into an adjective for describing complex, multi-layered narratives, and he had more than a little to do with the modern conception of Christmas. If all you know about Dickens is that he invented Ebenezer Scrooge, here’s a bit more.
- Despite his reputation for happy endings, Dickens’ novels can hold their own against anybody’s for psychological darkness.
- Dickens was fascinated by altered states of consciousness and learned how to hypnotize his friends.
- His novel David Copperfield was Sigmund Freud’s favorite, provides the stage name for a popular illusionist, and contains a character, Uriah Heep, who is the source of the name for a British band of the late-sixties.
- Henrik Ibsen’s famous play A Doll’s House takes its title from words used by a character in Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend. Speaking about her marriage, Bella Wilfer says “I want to be something so much worthier than the doll in the doll’s house.”
- Our Mutual Friend also contains dialogue that provided an early working title for T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”: “He do the Police in different voices.”
Charles Dickens – he’s in the middle of everything!