AlamyFiona Macdonald
Charlotte Brontë’s infatuated notes, Henry VIII’s lovesick doodles and the anguished scribbles of Nelson’s mistress: Fiona Macdonald picks eight love letters that offer a different slant on history.
The Age of Enlightenment emphasised reason over emotion, with the unexplained relegated to the realms of superstition and ignorance. Gothic writers of the late eighteenth century and Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century sought to reintroduce a sense of wonder and awe of the natural world. In Hard Times, Dickens looks at how facts stifle and corrupt individual expression of emotion and empathy. He also exposes the delusion and hypocrisy the characters labour under regarding their own lives.
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| Hans Christian Andersen |
The Danish writer’s behaviour on an extended visit killed the authors’ friendship, letters show
Vanessa Thorpe
Sunday 10 September 2017
It was not, to say the least, a successful visit. The burgeoning friendship between a pair of literary stars, Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen, had looked set to last. But it could not survive an overlong stay by the Danish author at the British novelist’s family home in Kent. Just how bad things became, on one side at least, has been revealed by a surprisingly frank letter sold at auction on Saturday.
The achievement of Universal Coverage in Health Care represents the best of humanity. Thanks to its creation, the solidarity of a few countries, replaced the dependence on charity suffered by a large part of the population to access medical and social services. Access to health care is a human right, not some sort of philanthropy.
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| Charles Dickens and Prince |
Hornby draws parallels between the Victorian novelist and the musician in this heartfelt homage to these brilliant, driven individuals
At the start of this heartfelt exercise in hero worship, Nick Hornby gathers together a throng of what he calls “My People” and ushers them into a VIP room in his head. They make up an eclectic pantheon, with Arsène Wenger jostling Joan Didion and the sitcom scriptwriters Galton and Simpson next to the gloomy painter Edward Hopper. Dickens and Prince are “two among many” in the gilded crowd, but Hornby singles them out for special homage. Dickens rescued him from the stupor of adolescence by showing that books were an escape route for the mind; Prince, with his keening falsetto, the prestidigitation of his guitar-playing and his hyperkinetic dance moves, delivered a physical excitement that is music’s special prerogative. Dickens made Hornby laugh, while Prince thrilled him by seeming to offer “hours of erotic ecstasy”.
Elif Shafak, Sarah Perry, Jeffrey Boakye and others tell us which of the two totemic literary figures they favour
Killian Fox
Sunday 2 March 2025
Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College Oxford and author of This Is Shakespeare
It’s a brilliantly preposterous thesis that Peter sets out but I disagree. What’s great about Dickens is the maximalist, chock-a-block, teeming sense you get of that world. His work is like an extraordinary baroque cathedral that you could spend your life looking at, absorbed in the detail. By contrast, Shakespeare is more like a black box. There’s a huge amount of potential to do these plays in very different worlds with very different outcomes. So what’s great about Dickens is it’s all there. But what’s completely indispensable about Shakespeare is it’s waiting for us to combine with it to make something new. I don’t think rereading Dickens makes a new Dickens, but rereading or reperforming Shakespeare does make a new Shakespeare.
After rereading the entire works of the great Victorian novelist during the pandemic, Peter Conrad became convinced – whisper it – that Dickens is an even greater writer than that other British literary giant, the Bard
Early in 2020, as society shut down, I retreated behind closed doors with Charles Dickens, who kept me company and cheered me up throughout the pandemic. Carried along by narratives that Dickens thought of as speedy locomotives and warmed by a combustible imagination that he compared to an industrial forge, I soon felt no need for tame timed circuits of the local park, and I even stopped fretting about the imminent end of the world. But although Dickens saved from me one disease, he infected me with another: escaping Covid-19, I contracted an incurable monomania instead.
Parts of an extensive collection of letters from Dickens’ relative and housekeeper Georgina Hogarth reveal her role in the making of a literary giant
Kate McCusker
Wednesday 7 February 2024
A collection of letters from one of Charles Dickens’ most valued confidantes will go on display in London for the first time this week to mark 212 years since the literary giant’s birth.
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| Charles Dickens |
On Killing Charles Dickens
I did everything I could to avoid writing my historical novel. When I finally started “The Fraud,” one principle was clear: no Dickens.
"David Copperfield" is probably the most autobiographical novel by Charles Dickens. He uses many incidents of his childhood and early life to create a considerable fictional achievement.
"David Copperfield" also stands as a midpoint in Dickens' oeuvre and is at least somewhat indicative of Dickens' work. This novel contains a complicated plot structure, a concentration on the moral and social worlds, and some of Dickens' most wonderful comic creations. "David Copperfield" is a broad canvas on which the great master of Victorian fiction uses his entire palette. Unlike many of his other novels, however, "David Copperfield" is written from the point of view of its titular character, looking back on the ups and downs of his long life.
