Spktyr wrote:
“Personally I think Dickens was massively overrated”
A Tale of Two Cities ?
Oliver Twist ?
A Christmas Carol ?
David Copperfield ?
Both Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were admirers. Dostoyevsky commented: “We understand Dickens in Russia, I am convinced, almost as well as the English, perhaps even with all the nuances. It may well be that we love him no less than his compatriots do. And yet how original is Dickens, and how very English!”
Tolstoy referred to David Copperfield as his favourite book, and he later adopted the novel as “a model for his own autobiographical reflections.”
French writer Jules Verne called Dickens his favourite writer, writing his novels “stand alone, dwarfing all others by their amazing power and felicity of expression.”
In 1944, Soviet film director and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein wrote an essay on Dickens influence on cinema, such as cross-cutting—where two stories run alongside each other, as seen in novels such as Oliver Twist.
“Both Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were admirers”
That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement. I also find those two to be greatly overrated and boring. Chapters and chapters of character development and little plot progression - figuratively speaking.