Happy Birthday to a Legend

Image courtesy: SeattlePi

Born in 1812, today is Charles Dickens' 200th birthday. No other writer with the exception of Shakespeare could have marshalled such a host of dramatis personae, as does Charles Dickens in his marvellous fictional creations. Indeed, every fictional character in Dickens has a marked individuality that is at once distinct and engaging, revealing the richness of his prolific creative genius. Indeed, Michael Slater, in his profound study entitled Dickens and Women describes Charles Dickens as the greatest creative genius in English literature of the last three hundred years. In short, he is called the greatest inventor of character after Shakespeare. In 1833, he began writing a series of sketches under the pseudonym of Boz. Soon, he started work on Pickwick Papers and a host of other unforgettable novels.  As much read, admired and loved as always, Dickens remains unrivalled in his style and diction, and will remain so in the years to come.

Happy Birthday Charles Dickens..!

I stumbled upon Claire Tomalin's beautiful letter to the master story-teller on his bicentennial celebrations, today, in The Guardian. btw, Tomalin is Dickens' biographer.

My dear Mr Dickens,

Happy 200th birthday! You yourself were not much given to celebrating anniversaries, but you did go to Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1864, with Robert Browning, Wilkie Collins and John

Forster, to celebrate Shakespeare's 300th, "in peace and quiet". And on 30 January 1849, you celebrated the bicentenary of the execution of Charles I with your friend Walter Savage Landor. In so doing, you gave a clear message of how greatly you honoured Shakespeare's writing – "was there ever such a fellow!" – and how heartily you disliked bad government.

Just now, we are all reading and rereading your novels, your journalism, and your story A Christmas Carol, with its pointed message that a decent society depends on the rich learning to be generous and the poor being saved from ignorance and want.

We are talking about your heroes and your villains: Pecksniff, Squeers, Quilp, Murdstone, Headstone; your jokes and your pathos; your silly, pretty little women; your strong women – Betsey Trotwood, Peggotty – and your glorious comic women: Mrs Gamp, Mrs Todgers, Flora Finching.

Read on...