Dickens is badly represented in most schools by his worst novels (Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities). Read ‘Bleak House’ or ‘Little Dorrit’ to see what Dickens could do.
Dickens was serialized in newspaper, wasn’t he? So he did not have the pretention of artist.
Great post!
His first performance of the story ran three hours. Later versions took about an hour and 25 minutes. Looking at the promptbook, it becomes clear just how much he cut. Complex sentences were replaced with simple ones. Often, anything to do with the state of mind of a character would be excised if it could be conveyed by tone of voice.
I’m reading this to my older kids this year. Any suggestions on a movie version when we’re done reading it? I haven’t looked into that yet.