Notes For March 31st, 2026

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This Day In Literary History

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On March 31st, 1836, The Pickwick Papers - the classic first novel by legendary English writer Charles Dickens, was published. Like most novels of the time, it first appeared in a serialized format, published in twenty monthly installments.

When the first installment was published on this date, only 400 copies were printed. By the time the 15th installment came out, it was being published in press runs of 40,000 copies.

Originally titled The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, the novel had originally been commissioned by publishers Chapman and Hall as captions to accompany humorous drawings by illustrator Robert Seymour.

The members of the Pickwick Club, founded by a wealthy old gentleman named Samuel Pickwick, travel through remote areas of the English countryside by coach, then report back on their adventures when they return. Alfred Jingle, an English mangling actor, charlatan, and practical joker, joins them and plays tricks on them.

Charles Dickens wasn't the publishers' first choice to write the book, but their senior editor had been impressed by his earlier collection of serialized writings, Sketches by Boz, which had also been written to accompany illustrations.

Sketches combined nonfiction articles with short stories. Dickens was just 21 years old when he wrote them. His Pickwick writings were also originally published under the pseudonym Boz, which was the childhood nickname Dickens had given his brother Augustus.

Robert Seymour had conceived the original idea for Pickwick, but creative control of the series went to Charles Dickens, who took the idea and improved on it vastly. Seymour had previously suffered a nervous breakdown after a nasty row with Gilbert A'Beckett, editor of Figaro in London magazine.

The conflict, over money owed Seymour and the illustrator's parody of another writer's work, resulted in Seymour resigning and A'Beckett mounting a cruel public smear campaign against him. The illustrator returned to work after A'Beckett was replaced as editor.

Now, Seymour found himself in another bad situation. His original idea for Pickwick had been given to someone else, who made it his own and improved it. Seymour was never given credit for his creative input.

To add insult to injury, he wasn't even credited as illustrator. The publisher listed the byline as "Edited by Boz with Illustrations." Before the second installment of Pickwick was completed, a distraught Seymour committed suicide with his shotgun.

Seymour's widow publicly blasted Charles Dickens and the publishers, claiming that the first two installments of Pickwick were her husband's idea, i.e., that he told Dickens what to write. Actually, the opposite was true; Dickens had creative control.

Robert Seymour had struggled to come up with illustrations to complement Dickens' writing, frustrating the author to the point that he advertised for a new illustrator. After Seymour's death, Dickens took over as editor of the publication and saved it from bankruptcy.

Scholars have agreed that although Robert Seymour came up with the original idea for The Pickwick Papers, if he'd had creative control over the series, the final product would have been completely different and nowhere near as successful.

It was Charles Dickens' distinctive style of writing that made the novel what it was. When The Pickwick Papers was issued in book form, the publishers defended themselves and Dickens with the following disclaimer:

Mr. Seymour never originated or suggested an incident, a phrase, or a word to be found in this book. Mr. Seymour died when only twenty-four pages of this book were published, and when assuredly not forty-eight were written... all of the input from the artist was in response to the words that had already been written.

Taking a final pot shot at the troubled illustrator, the disclaimer goes on to say “that he took his own life through jealousy, as it was well known that Seymour’s sanity had been questioned."

Suicide was considered a scandalous act by Victorian society and a felo de se (felony to self) by the law, so Seymour was denied a Christian burial. His estate went to the government, and his widow couldn't receive any royalties for his work on The Pickwick Papers.

Despite the controversy surrounding its conception, The Pickwick Papers made Charles Dickens' name as a novelist. His second novel would make him a legend. It was named after its main character - a poor orphan boy called Oliver Twist.

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Quote Of The Day

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"'I am ruminating,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'on the strange mutability of human affairs.' 'Ah! I see — in at the palace door one day, out at the window the next. Philosopher, Sir?' 'An observer of human nature, Sir,' said Mr. Pickwick. 'Ah, so am I. Most people are when they've little to do and less to get.'"

- Charles Dickens, from The Pickwick Papers

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Charles Dickens' classic first novel, The Pickwick Papers. Enjoy!

Notes For December 17th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On December 17th, 1843, A Christmas Carol, the classic novella by the legendary English writer Charles Dickens, was published in London. (Sometimes the publication date is mistakenly listed as December 19th.)

Dickens began writing the book in October of 1843 and completed it in six weeks, with the final pages written during the first week of December.

After feuding with his publisher over the small amount of money he'd earned for his novel Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens declined a lump-sum payment for A Christmas Carol and chose to take royalties instead.

The novella's first edition run of 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve, but because of high production costs, Dickens only earned £230 and not the £1,000 he expected - and needed badly, as his wife had become pregnant again.

Although it didn't earn him as much as he'd hoped, A Christmas Carol proved to be a huge critical success, something Dickens also needed badly, after the failure of Martin Chuzzlewit.

A scathing satire ahead of its time, Martin Chuzzlewit was controversial for its assault on American hypocrisy and barbarity. Dickens, a ferocious abolitionist, loathed America; he'd visited the country and witnessed firsthand the horrors of slavery and cruelty of white Southerners.

A Christmas Carol continued to sell well, and soon, the author saw more of a profit. In January of 1844, less than a month after its first edition release, it appeared in a pirated edition.

Dickens sued Farley's Illuminated Library, the publishers of the pirate edition, and won. Unfortunately, the company declared bankruptcy to avoid paying him damages, leaving him without compensation and owing £700 in legal expenses.

To fight future piracy, Dickens periodically tweaked his manuscript for A Christmas Carol and republished it in revised editions, something many writers did back when copyright laws were inadequate or nonexistent.

The piracy of A Christmas Carol was still a bitter disappointment for Dickens, as he felt a special affection for the novella's lessons in love and generosity that he wanted to teach the world.

Dickens based A Christmas Carol on his own experiences and American writer Washington Irving's tales of the traditional old English Christmas and its customs.

In 1824, when Dickens was twelve years old, his prosperous, upper middle class father's financial mismanagement ruined the family. Unable to pay his creditors, he was arrested for debt. The Dickens family was sent to debtor's prison.

One family member avoided imprisonment - precocious, intellectual Charles, who was forced to leave school, pawn his collection of books, and go to work in a factory to pay off his father's debts.

In early 1843, Dickens toured the Cornish tin mines and saw children working in appalling conditions. He also visited one of several London schools that had been set up to educate the city's large population of half-starved, illiterate street children.

Remembering his own horrific experiences as a child laborer, Dickens researched the effect of the Industrial Revolution on poor children. He gave a speech at the Manchester Athenaeum urging employers and workers to work together to fight illiteracy.

Dickens wrote and planned to publish a low-cost political pamphlet, An Appeal to the People of England, on Behalf of the Poor Man's Child, but changed his mind and put off the publication.

Instead, he tried to inspire compassion for the poor through his beloved novella, A Christmas Carol. Its main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, had been partly based on Dickens as a child after his family's financial ruin.

As a young boy, he'd had a strong sense of intellectual and class superiority. When he was forced to work alongside other poor children (and adults), his initial humiliation and anger were transformed into a deep, lifelong compassion for the poor and oppressed.

A Christmas Carol opens on Christmas Eve, seven years after the death of Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner, Jacob Marley. Scrooge is a greedy and heartless moneylender and landlord who overworks and grossly underpays his loyal and hardworking clerk, Bob Cratchit.

Scrooge hates Christmas, and famously dismisses the holiday as humbug. After grudgingly allowing Cratchit to take Christmas Day off, Scrooge leaves for home, where he is haunted by the ghost of Jacob Marley.

Tormented and wrapped in heavy chains built link by link by his sins, Marley warns Scrooge that he will suffer the same fate if he doesn't change his ways. He tells Scrooge that three more spirits will haunt him.

The Ghost of Christmas Past brings Scrooge back to his past, a time when he cared about people and loved Christmas - before tragedy broke his heart and greed warped his soul. The Ghost of Christmas Present exposes Scrooge to the plight of the poor.

The ghost takes Scrooge to observe Bob Cratchit and his family, who are struggling to survive on the slave wages that Scrooge pays him. He also shows Scrooge how his nephew Fred - the son of his beloved sister who died in childbirth - still loves him though Scrooge disowned him.

The eerily silent Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come proves to be the scariest spirit, tormenting Scrooge with a vision of the death of Tiny Tim - Bob Cratchit's crippled and sick little son - which could have been prevented.

He also shows Scrooge a vision of his own death, where nobody mourns him. Scrooge repents, awakening on Christmas morning with joy in his heart, vowing to be kind and keep the spirit of the holiday with him always.

Scrooge spends Christmas Day doing good deeds, including anonymously sending a huge turkey to the Cratchit family, donating a large sum of money to the poor, and reconciling with his nephew, Fred.

The novella ends the next day, with Scrooge revealing his transformation to Bob Cratchit and vowing to help Bob's son Tiny Tim get well, which he does:

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.

Needless to say, A Christmas Carol became hugely popular, a classic reread every year at Christmastime. Dickens' readers begged him to write another holiday story, so from 1844-48, he published some Christmas-themed short stories.

They sold well, but the critics trashed them. By 1849, Dickens decided that he was done writing Christmas stories, but he wanted to reach out to people with his "Carol philosophy." So, he began performing public readings of A Christmas Carol during the holiday season.

Dickens' first public reading of A Christmas Carol took place in 1853. It was an unabridged reading; for later performances, he prepared an abridged text to read. He would perform 127 public readings of his holiday novella.

His last performance was in 1870 - the year of his death. In 1867, while on his first and only public reading tour of America, (where slavery was now abolished) Dickens performed a reading in Boston on Christmas Eve.

One of the spectators, a factory owner named Fairbanks, was so moved by the story that he experienced a Scrooge-like transformation and sent every one of his employees a turkey.

A Christmas Carol would be adapted many times for the stage, screen, radio, and television. The first stage play adaptation opened on February 5th, 1844 - less than two months after the book was published - and was a big hit.

The novella would be adapted for the screen numerous times. The best known and best loved film version is the 1951 British production starring Alistair Sim as Scrooge.

In 2009, Disney released a 3D animated adaptation starring the voice of Jim Carrey as Scrooge, whose name would enter the English lexicon as a synonym for the word miser.

A Christmas Carol remains one of the all-time greatest works of English literature and a treasured holiday classic.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

- Charles Dickens, from A Christmas Carol

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Charles Dickens' classic novella, A Christmas Carol. Enjoy!

Notes For December 2nd, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On December 2nd, 1867, the legendary English writer Charles Dickens gave the first performance of his public reading tour of the United States. It wasn't Dickens' first visit to America.

He previously visited the United States and Canada in 1842. He spent that time in the U.S. giving lectures, publicly denouncing slavery, and raising support for the enacting of copyright laws.

Dickens' fierce abolitionist convictions didn't endear him to many Americans during his first visit - he even met with then President John Tyler at the White House to discuss the atrocities he'd witnessed while passing through the Southern slave states.

When he returned to England, Dickens wrote American Notes for General Circulation, a travelogue of his visit to America. Filled with scathing satire, the book described not only the horrors of slavery, but also the vulgarity and ill manners of white Southerners.

He also chronicled his visits to prisons and mental institutions and criticized the American press and the poor sanitary conditions of American cities. Despite all this, Dickens had a generally favorable impression of America, though he couldn't forgive the country's insistence on maintaining the practice of slavery.

Twenty-five years later, for his next visit to America, Dickens had planned his first public reading tour. At this time, the 55-year-old writer had become hugely popular in America.

He was moved that the country had finally abolished slavery. So, on November 9th, 1867, Dickens set sail for the United States. He landed in Boston, where he began his public reading tour in America.

Dickens' first reading, like almost of all his performances on the tour, was sold out. Some fans had slept outside the night before tickets went on sale; as they'd expected, the line for tickets was literally half a mile long.

In attendance for Dickens' first reading in Boston were New England's literary elite, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and Charles Eliot Norton.

Emerson complained that Dickens' performance was too polished for his taste. The legendary American writer Mark Twain saw Dickens read and dismissed the performance as "glittering frostwork." Mostly, however, the performances earned rave reviews.

That Emerson should criticize Dickens' performance as too polished was surprising considering the fact that he was quite ill for most of the tour, suffering from insomnia, exhaustion, the flu, catarrh, and a limp from neuralgia of the foot. He handed out printed cards of apology to his audiences for his sickness.

Dickens' illness didn't prevent him from reaching his audience and delivering his message. When he read his classic novella, A Christmas Carol (1843) in Boston on Christmas Eve, a local factory owner in attendance experienced a Scrooge-like transformation and sent every one of his employees a turkey.

There were some funny experiences on the tour as well. A little girl recognized him on a train, sat down next to him, and told him how much she loved his books.

She also said, "Of course, I do skip some of the very dull parts, once in a while; not the short dull parts, but the long ones." Dickens laughed heartily, then took out his notebook and asked her to elaborate.

Another humorous incident found Dickens recognized by the janitor of the hotel he stayed at in New York. The janitor, a German immigrant, struck up a conversation with him, saying, "Mr. Digguns, you are great, mein herr. Dere is no ent to you! Bedder and bedder. Vot next!"

Realizing that his health was declining and believing that there would be no more American tours for him, at his last performance in New York, Dickens ended his show with the following announcement:

Ladies and gentlemen, the shadow of one word has impended over me all this evening, and the time has come at last when the shadow must fall. It is but a very short one, but the weight of such things is not measurable by their length, and two much shorter words express the whole round of our human existence. Ladies and gentlemen, I beg to bid you farewell - and I pray God bless you, and God bless the land in which I leave you.

Charles Dickens died three years later in 1870, at 58.

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Quote Of The Day

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“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”

- Charles Dickens

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a clip from Dickens Reading Dickens, actor Tim Tully's one man show which depicts Charles Dickens giving one of his public reading performances. Enjoy!

Notes For August 29th, 2025

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 29th, 1833, Britain's Parliament passed the Mills and Factory Act, the first of many reforms enacted to improve the "health and morals" of child laborers - the most exploited members of the working class.

The Mills and Factory Act made it illegal for children under nine years old to work, limited the work week of children aged 9-12 to a maximum of 48 hours and limited the work week for teenagers to a maximum of 68 hours.

The Act also included minimum provisions for facilitating the education of child laborers and for protecting their health and safety. Although woefully inadequate by today's standards, the law was revolutionary for its time.

Why would Parliament, then notorious for its extreme reluctance to regulate British businesses in any way, pass the Mills and Factory Act, which for the first time ever granted national government inspectors unprecedented, unlimited access to factories?

And why, over the years, were more regulatory acts passed by Parliament - acts that were increasingly stricter, leading to the total outlawing of most forms of child labor?

It was all due to the efforts of England's greatest writers, whose works brought the horrific nature of unregulated child labor to national attention, sparking national outrage and demands for reform.

In 1789, the legendary poet William Blake published his classic poem The Chimney Sweeper, in which a child laborer tells of his unhappy plight:

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep.
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep...

Blake died in 1827 - six years before the Mills and Factory Act was passed. He spent his last years living in rooms off the Strand, near the alleyways where a child laborer named Charles Dickens walked en route to the job he detested.

Another great English writer who brought the horrors of child labor to national attention was Frances Trollope, whose classic novel, The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, The Factory Boy was published in 1840.

To ensure the accuracy of her novel, Trollope thoroughly researched child labor, combing through contemporary documents and reading the testimony of the victims of unregulated child labor. Most influential was a memoir written by a man named Robert Blincoe.

Blincoe became a workhouse orphan at the age of four. When he was seven, he and eighty other workhouse children, both boys and girls, were taken to work in a horrific textile mill in Nottingham. He would later testify before a Parliamentary committee investigating child labor abuses:

I have seen the time when two weights have each been screwed to my ears. Then three or four of us have been hung on a beam over the machinery, hanging by our hands. Mind, we were apprentices without a mother or father to take care of us. Then we used to stand up, in a skip, without our shirts, and be beat with straps. Then they used to tie up a 28-pound weight to hang down our backs.

Of course, the English writer who contributed the most to reforming child labor was the aforementioned Charles Dickens, who exposed the horrors of child labor in classic novels such as Oliver Twist (1837) and David Copperfield (1850).

As a child laborer himself, he saw these horrors firsthand. Dickens, a child prodigy, had lived a comfortable upper middle class life. Like other children of his class, he had felt a sense of superiority and entitlement.

Then, when he was twelve, his father went broke and was sent to debtor's prison. Charles was forced to work to pay off his father's debts. Angrily bemoaning his situation at first, he soon developed a deep, lifelong compassion for the poor and oppressed of all ages.

The passage of the Mills and Factory Act in 1833 and subsequent reforms to end the suffering caused by unregulated child labor is proof that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

The Mills and Factory Act was passed not because of a violent revolution at the workplace, but because England's greatest writers had the courage to speak out against the suffering of child laborers and use the power of their words to bring about change.

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Quote Of The Day

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"In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice."

- Charles Dickens

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Charles Dickens' classic novel, David Copperfield. Enjoy!

Notes For December 17th, 2024

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This Day In Literary History

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On December 17th, 1843, A Christmas Carol, the classic novella by the legendary English writer Charles Dickens, was published in London. (Sometimes the publication date is mistakenly listed as December 19th.)

Dickens began writing the book in October of 1843 and completed it in six weeks, with the final pages written during the first week of December.

After feuding with his publisher over the small amount of money he'd earned for his novel Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens declined a lump-sum payment for A Christmas Carol and chose to take royalties instead.

The novella's first edition run of 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve, but because of high production costs, Dickens only earned £230 and not the £1,000 he expected - and needed badly, as his wife had become pregnant again.

Although it didn't earn him as much as he'd hoped, A Christmas Carol proved to be a huge critical success, something Dickens also needed badly, after the failure of Martin Chuzzlewit.

A scathing satire ahead of its time, Martin Chuzzlewit was controversial for its assault on American hypocrisy and barbarity. Dickens, a ferocious abolitionist, loathed America; he'd visited the country and witnessed firsthand the horrors of slavery and cruelty of white Southerners.

A Christmas Carol continued to sell well, and soon, the author saw more of a profit. In January of 1844, less than a month after its first edition release, it appeared in a pirated edition.

Dickens sued Farley's Illuminated Library, the publishers of the pirate edition, and won. Unfortunately, the company declared bankruptcy to avoid paying him damages, leaving him without compensation and owing £700 in legal expenses.

To fight future piracy, Dickens periodically tweaked his manuscript for A Christmas Carol and republished it in revised editions, something many writers did back when copyright laws were inadequate or nonexistent.

The piracy of A Christmas Carol was still a bitter disappointment for Dickens, as he felt a special affection for the novella's lessons in love and generosity that he wanted to teach the world.

Dickens based A Christmas Carol on his own experiences and American writer Washington Irving's tales of the traditional old English Christmas and its customs.

In 1824, when Dickens was twelve years old, his prosperous, upper middle class father's financial mismanagement ruined the family. Unable to pay his creditors, he was arrested for debt. The Dickens family was sent to debtor's prison.

One family member avoided imprisonment - precocious, intellectual Charles, who was forced to leave school, pawn his collection of books, and go to work in a factory to pay off his father's debts.

In early 1843, Dickens toured the Cornish tin mines and saw children working in appalling conditions. He also visited one of several London schools that had been set up to educate the city's large population of half-starved, illiterate street children.

Remembering his own horrific experiences as a child laborer, Dickens researched the effect of the Industrial Revolution on poor children. He gave a speech at the Manchester Athenaeum urging employers and workers to work together to fight illiteracy.

Dickens wrote and planned to publish a low-cost political pamphlet, An Appeal to the People of England, on Behalf of the Poor Man's Child, but changed his mind and put off the publication.

Instead, he tried to inspire compassion for the poor through his beloved novella, A Christmas Carol. Its main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, had been partly based on Dickens as a child after his family's financial ruin.

As a young boy, he'd had a strong sense of intellectual and class superiority. When he was forced to work alongside other poor children (and adults), his initial humiliation and anger were transformed into a deep, lifelong compassion for the poor and oppressed.

A Christmas Carol opens on Christmas Eve, seven years after the death of Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner, Jacob Marley. Scrooge is a greedy and heartless moneylender and landlord who overworks and grossly underpays his loyal and hardworking clerk, Bob Cratchit.

Scrooge hates Christmas, and famously dismisses the holiday as humbug. After grudgingly allowing Cratchit to take Christmas Day off, Scrooge leaves for home, where he is haunted by the ghost of Jacob Marley.

Tormented and wrapped in heavy chains built link by link by his sins, Marley warns Scrooge that he will suffer the same fate if he doesn't change his ways. He tells Scrooge that three more spirits will haunt him.

The Ghost of Christmas Past brings Scrooge back to his past, a time when he cared about people and loved Christmas - before tragedy broke his heart and greed warped his soul. The Ghost of Christmas Present exposes Scrooge to the plight of the poor.

The ghost takes Scrooge to observe Bob Cratchit and his family, who are struggling to survive on the slave wages that Scrooge pays him. He also shows Scrooge how his nephew Fred - the son of his beloved sister who died in childbirth - still loves him though Scrooge disowned him.

The eerily silent Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come proves to be the scariest spirit, tormenting Scrooge with a vision of the death of Tiny Tim - Bob Cratchit's crippled and sick little son - which could have been prevented.

He also shows Scrooge a vision of his own death, where nobody mourns him. Scrooge repents, awakening on Christmas morning with joy in his heart, vowing to be kind and keep the spirit of the holiday with him always.

Scrooge spends Christmas Day doing good deeds, including anonymously sending a huge turkey to the Cratchit family, donating a large sum of money to the poor, and reconciling with his nephew, Fred.

The novella ends the next day, with Scrooge revealing his transformation to Bob Cratchit and vowing to help Bob's son Tiny Tim get well, which he does:

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.

Needless to say, A Christmas Carol became hugely popular, a classic reread every year at Christmastime. Dickens' readers begged him to write another holiday story, so from 1844-48, he published some Christmas-themed short stories.

They sold well, but the critics trashed them. By 1849, Dickens decided that he was done writing Christmas stories, but he wanted to reach out to people with his "Carol philosophy." So, he began performing public readings of A Christmas Carol during the holiday season.

Dickens' first public reading of A Christmas Carol took place in 1853. It was an unabridged reading; for later performances, he prepared an abridged text to read. He would perform 127 public readings of his holiday novella.

His last performance was in 1870 - the year of his death. In 1867, while on his first and only public reading tour of America, (where slavery was now abolished) Dickens performed a reading in Boston on Christmas Eve.

One of the spectators, a factory owner named Fairbanks, was so moved by the story that he experienced a Scrooge-like transformation and sent every one of his employees a turkey.

A Christmas Carol would be adapted many times for the stage, screen, radio, and television. The first stage play adaptation opened on February 5th, 1844 - less than two months after the book was published - and was a big hit.

The novella would be adapted for the screen numerous times. The best known and best loved film version is the 1951 British production starring Alistair Sim as Scrooge.

In 2009, Disney released a 3D animated adaptation starring the voice of Jim Carrey as Scrooge, whose name would enter the English lexicon as a synonym for the word miser.

A Christmas Carol remains one of the all-time greatest works of English literature and a treasured holiday classic.

---

Quote Of The Day

---

"Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

- Charles Dickens, from A Christmas Carol

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features a complete reading of Charles Dickens' classic novella, A Christmas Carol. Enjoy!

Notes For August 29th, 2024

---

This Day In Literary History

---

On August 29th, 1833, Britain's Parliament passed the Mills and Factory Act, the first of many reforms enacted to improve the "health and morals" of child laborers - the most exploited members of the working class.

The Mills and Factory Act made it illegal for children under nine years old to work, limited the work week of children aged 9-12 to a maximum of 48 hours and limited the work week for teenagers to a maximum of 68 hours.

The Act also included minimum provisions for facilitating the education of child laborers and for protecting their health and safety. Although woefully inadequate by today's standards, the law was revolutionary for its time.

Why would Parliament, then notorious for its extreme reluctance to regulate British businesses in any way, pass the Mills and Factory Act, which for the first time ever granted national government inspectors unprecedented, unlimited access to factories?

And why, over the years, were more regulatory acts passed by Parliament - acts that were increasingly stricter, leading to the total outlawing of most forms of child labor?

It was all due to the efforts of England's greatest writers, whose works brought the horrific nature of unregulated child labor to national attention, sparking national outrage and demands for reform.

In 1789, the legendary poet William Blake published his classic poem The Chimney Sweeper, in which a child laborer tells of his unhappy plight:

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep.
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep...

Blake died in 1827 - six years before the Mills and Factory Act was passed. He spent his last years living in rooms off the Strand, near the alleyways where a child laborer named Charles Dickens walked en route to the job he detested.

Another great English writer who brought the horrors of child labor to national attention was Frances Trollope, whose classic novel, The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, The Factory Boy was published in 1840.

To ensure the accuracy of her novel, Trollope thoroughly researched child labor, combing through contemporary documents and reading the testimony of the victims of unregulated child labor. Most influential was a memoir written by a man named Robert Blincoe.

Blincoe became a workhouse orphan at the age of four. When he was seven, he and eighty other workhouse children, both boys and girls, were taken to work in a horrific textile mill in Nottingham. He would later testify before a Parliamentary committee investigating child labor abuses:

I have seen the time when two weights have each been screwed to my ears. Then three or four of us have been hung on a beam over the machinery, hanging by our hands. Mind, we were apprentices without a mother or father to take care of us. Then we used to stand up, in a skip, without our shirts, and be beat with straps. Then they used to tie up a 28-pound weight to hang down our backs.

Of course, the English writer who contributed the most to reforming child labor was the aforementioned Charles Dickens, who exposed the horrors of child labor in classic novels such as Oliver Twist (1837) and David Copperfield (1850).

As a child laborer himself, he saw these horrors firsthand. Dickens, a child prodigy, had lived a comfortable upper middle class life. Like other children of his class, he had felt a sense of superiority and entitlement.

Then, when he was twelve, his father went broke and was sent to debtor's prison. Charles was forced to work to pay off his father's debts. Angrily bemoaning his situation at first, he soon developed a deep, lifelong compassion for the poor and oppressed of all ages.

The passage of the Mills and Factory Act in 1833 and subsequent reforms to end the suffering caused by unregulated child labor is proof that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

The Mills and Factory Act was passed not because of a violent revolution at the workplace, but because England's greatest writers had the courage to speak out against the suffering of child laborers and use the power of their words to bring about change.

---

Quote Of The Day

---

"In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice."

- Charles Dickens

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features a complete reading of Charles Dickens' classic novel, David Copperfield. Enjoy!

Notes For August 29th, 2023

---

This Day In Literary History

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On August 29th, 1833, Britain's Parliament passed the Mills and Factory Act, the first of many reforms enacted to improve the "health and morals" of child laborers - the most exploited members of the working class.

The Mills and Factory Act made it illegal for children under nine years old to work, limited the work week of children aged 9-12 to a maximum of 48 hours and limited the work week for teenagers to a maximum of 68 hours.

The Act also included minimum provisions for facilitating the education of child laborers and for protecting their health and safety. Although woefully inadequate by today's standards, the law was revolutionary for its time.

Why would Parliament, then notorious for its extreme reluctance to regulate British businesses in any way, pass the Mills and Factory Act, which for the first time ever granted national government inspectors unprecedented, unlimited access to factories?

And why, over the years, were more regulatory acts passed by Parliament - acts that were increasingly stricter, leading to the total outlawing of most forms of child labor?

It was all due to the efforts of England's greatest writers, whose works brought the horrific nature of unregulated child labor to national attention, sparking national outrage and demands for reform.

In 1789, the legendary poet William Blake published his classic poem The Chimney Sweeper, in which a child laborer tells of his unhappy plight:

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep.
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep...

Blake died in 1827 - six years before the Mills and Factory Act was passed. He spent his last years living in rooms off the Strand, near the alleyways where a child laborer named Charles Dickens walked en route to the job he detested.

Another great English writer who brought the horrors of child labor to national attention was Frances Trollope, whose classic novel, The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, The Factory Boy was published in 1840.

To ensure the accuracy of her novel, Trollope thoroughly researched child labor, combing through contemporary documents and reading the testimony of the victims of unregulated child labor. Most influential was a memoir written by a man named Robert Blincoe.

Blincoe became a workhouse orphan at the age of four. When he was seven, he and eighty other workhouse children, both boys and girls, were taken to work in a horrific textile mill in Nottingham. He would later testify before a Parliamentary committee investigating child labor abuses:

I have seen the time when two weights have each been screwed to my ears. Then three or four of us have been hung on a beam over the machinery, hanging by our hands. Mind, we were apprentices without a mother or father to take care of us. Then we used to stand up, in a skip, without our shirts, and be beat with straps. Then they used to tie up a 28-pound weight to hang down our backs.

Of course, the English writer who contributed the most to reforming child labor was the aforementioned Charles Dickens, who exposed the horrors of child labor in classic novels such as Oliver Twist (1837) and David Copperfield (1850).

As a child laborer himself, he saw these horrors firsthand. Dickens, a child prodigy, had lived a comfortable upper middle class life. Like other children of his class, he had felt a sense of superiority and entitlement.

Then, when he was twelve, his father went broke and was sent to debtor's prison. Charles was forced to work to pay off his father's debts. Angrily bemoaning his situation at first, he soon developed a deep, lifelong compassion for the poor and oppressed of all ages.

The passage of the Mills and Factory Act in 1833 and subsequent reforms to end the suffering caused by unregulated child labor is proof that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

The Mills and Factory Act was passed not because of a violent revolution at the workplace, but because England's greatest writers had the courage to speak out against the suffering of child laborers and use the power of their words to bring about change.

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Quote Of The Day

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"In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice." - Charles Dickens

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Charles Dickens' classic novel, David Copperfield. Enjoy!

Notes For August 3rd, 2023

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 3rd, 1861, Great Expectations, the classic novel by the legendary English writer Charles Dickens, was published. Specifically, the final installment of the novel was published.

Like most novels of the time, Great Expectations first appeared in a serialized format. It was published in installments in Charles Dickens' own weekly literary magazine, All The Year Round.

Great Expectations tells the tale of Philip "Pip" Pirrip - his unexpected rise from poor orphan boy to wealthy gentleman, and the life lessons he learns in the process. The novel opens on Christmas Eve in 1812.

Pip, then seven years old, is a poor orphan boy being raised by his older sister and her husband. Pip's resentful and cruel sister beats him, but her husband Joe Gargery, a kind and humble man who works as the village blacksmith, becomes Pip's father figure.

On Christmas Eve, in the village churchyard, little Pip meets a man he at first believes to be a poor, starving soul - until he sees the man's leg shackle. He's actually a convict named Magwitch who escaped from a prison ship.

He scares Pip into bringing him some food and a file to cut away the shackle. Pip steals the goods from his sister's house and brings them to Magwitch. The convict is surprised and moved by Pip's kindness and generosity.

Later, Pip receives an invitation to the house of Miss Havisham, a wealthy old village woman. Miss Havisham lives with her adopted daughter, Estella, and for several years, Pip visits them regularly and keeps them company.

Miss Havisham is a haunted, ghost-like woman who always wears an old, yellowed wedding dress. She was jilted at the altar - an act of cruelty that scarred her for life. As the years pass, Pip falls in love with Estella.

One day, Miss Havisham tells Pip that he can't visit her anymore - it's time for him to begin his apprenticeship with Joe Gargery. Having tasted the good life at Miss Havisham's, he hates being an apprentice blacksmith.

He wants to marry Estella, but fears that she will see him as common and beneath her. What he doesn't know is that Miss Havisham is raising Estella to be a cruel woman destined to break men's hearts.

After Estella leaves the village, Pip's fortunes change literally when a lawyer arrives to tell him that he has inherited a large sum of money from an anonymous benefactor, on the condition that he leave for London immediately and become a gentleman. Pip agrees.

In London, he studies with a tutor and lives with his new friend, Herbert Pocket. Pip determines to become a gentleman and is ashamed of his old, common life with Joe Gargery, from whom he grows apart. Pip believes Miss Havisham is his benefactor, and that she wants to make a gentleman of him so he can marry Estella.

One stormy night, Pip learns the truth about his anonymous benefactor. It wasn't Miss Havisham at all - it was Magwitch, the convict he'd befriended years ago on Christmas Eve.

Moved by Pip's compassion, Magwitch left him his money so he could become a gentleman. What's more, Magwitch will soon arrive for a visit. Appalled that he was financed by a convict's fortune, Pip fears that Estella will never marry him.

When Pip is reunited with her and Miss Havisham, he finds that Estella is unhappily married to a man named Bentley Drummle. He also learns the truth about Miss Havisham's jilting. When the old woman accidentally sets herself on fire, Pip saves her life.

Later, he decides to flee with Magwitch, who is still wanted by the law. When he makes one last visit to the badly burned Miss Havisham, she repents and asks Pip to forgive her, which he does.

With the help of his friend Herbert Pocket and Herbert's friend, Startop, Pip tries to help Magwitch escape, but the convict is caught thanks to his old enemy, Compeyson - the swindler who jilted Miss Havisham. The two men fight, and Compeyson is killed in the struggle.

A badly injured Magwitch goes to jail, and Pip finally realizes that Magwitch is a good and noble man. He tends to his ailing benefactor, visiting him every day.

Pip soon makes a shocking discovery - Magwitch is Estella's father. He tells him on his deathbed that he wants to marry Estella, and Magwitch dies a happy man.

Broke again and ill, Pip goes home, where Joe Gargery nurses him back to health. After he recovers, Pip goes into business with Herbert Pocket. Years later, he decides to make one last visit to Miss Havisham's old house.

There, he finds Estella wandering about, and learns that her marriage is over. She asks Pip to accept her as a friend, and the novel ends with the hope that they may finally be together.

That's just a threadbare outline of this epic novel, a haunting Gothic classic that must be fully read to be appreciated. This is Charles Dickens at the apex of his power as a storyteller.

Dickens revised the ending of Great Expectations prior to its publication. In the original ending, Pip finds that Estella has remarried following the death of her abusive husband. He tells her that he's glad she became a better person than the girl Miss Havisham raised her to be.

Having lost his true love, Pip never marries. Dickens' friend, writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, told him that this ending was much too sad and encouraged him to change it. So he did, ending the novel on a happier note.

Many scholars and writers prefer the original ending, which they believe is more consistent with the tone of the story. It often appears as an appendix in new editions of the novel.

Great Expectations is considered to be one of the greatest and most sophisticated works of English literature ever written, and rightfully so. It has been adapted for the stage, radio, screen, and television over 250 times.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule." - Charles Dickens, from his novel Great Expectations

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Enjoy!

Notes For March 31st, 2023

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This Day In Literary History

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On March 31st, 1836, The Pickwick Papers - the classic first novel by legendary English writer Charles Dickens, was published. Like most novels of the time, it first appeared in a serialized format, published in twenty monthly installments.

When the first installment was published on this date, only 400 copies were printed. By the time the 15th installment came out, it was being published in press runs of 40,000 copies.

Originally titled The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, the novel had originally been commissioned by publishers Chapman and Hall as captions to accompany humorous drawings by illustrator Robert Seymour.

The members of the Pickwick Club, founded by a wealthy old gentleman named Samuel Pickwick, travel through remote areas of the English countryside by coach, then report back on their adventures when they return. Alfred Jingle, an English mangling actor, charlatan, and practical joker, joins them and plays tricks on them.

Charles Dickens wasn't the publishers' first choice to write the book, but their senior editor had been impressed by his earlier collection of serialized writings, Sketches by Boz, which had also been written to accompany illustrations.

Sketches combined nonfiction articles with short stories. Dickens was just 21 years old when he wrote them. His Pickwick writings were also originally published under the pseudonym Boz, which was the childhood nickname Dickens had given his brother Augustus.

Robert Seymour had conceived the original idea for Pickwick, but creative control of the series went to Charles Dickens, who took the idea and improved on it vastly. Seymour had previously suffered a nervous breakdown after a nasty row with Gilbert A'Beckett, editor of Figaro in London magazine.

The conflict, over money owed Seymour and the illustrator's parody of another writer's work, resulted in Seymour resigning and A'Beckett mounting a cruel public smear campaign against him. The illustrator returned to work after A'Beckett was replaced as editor.

Now, Seymour found himself in another bad situation. His original idea for Pickwick had been given to someone else, who made it his own and improved it. Seymour was never given credit for his creative input.

To add insult to injury, he wasn't even credited as illustrator. The publisher listed the byline as "Edited by Boz with Illustrations." Before the second installment of Pickwick was completed, a distraught Seymour committed suicide with his shotgun.

Seymour's widow publicly blasted Charles Dickens and the publishers, claiming that the first two installments of Pickwick were her husband's idea, i.e., that he told Dickens what to write. Actually, the opposite was true; Dickens had creative control.

Robert Seymour had struggled to come up with illustrations to compliment Dickens' writing, frustrating the author to the point that he advertised for a new illustrator. After Seymour's death, Dickens took over as editor of the publication and saved it from bankruptcy.

Scholars have agreed that although Robert Seymour came up with the original idea for The Pickwick Papers, if he'd had creative control over the series, the final product would have been completely different and nowhere near as successful.

It was Charles Dickens' distinctive style of writing that made the novel what it was. When The Pickwick Papers was issued in book form, the publishers defended themselves and Dickens with the following disclaimer:

Mr. Seymour never originated or suggested an incident, a phrase, or a word to be found in this book. Mr. Seymour died when only twenty-four pages of this book were published, and when assuredly not forty-eight were written... all of the input from the artist was in response to the words that had already been written.

Taking a final pot shot at the troubled illustrator, the disclaimer goes on to say “that he took his own life through jealousy, as it was well known that Seymour’s sanity had been questioned."

Suicide was considered a scandalous act by Victorian society and a felo de se (felony to self) by the law, so Seymour was denied a Christian burial. His estate went to the government, and his widow couldn't receive any royalties for his work on The Pickwick Papers.

Despite the controversy surrounding its conception, The Pickwick Papers made Charles Dickens' name as a novelist. His second novel would make him a legend. It was named after its main character - a poor orphan boy called Oliver Twist.

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Quote Of The Day

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"'I am ruminating,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'on the strange mutability of human affairs.' 'Ah! I see — in at the palace door one day, out at the window the next. Philosopher, Sir?' 'An observer of human nature, Sir,' said Mr. Pickwick. 'Ah, so am I. Most people are when they've little to do and less to get.'" - Charles Dickens, from The Pickwick Papers

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Charles Dickens' classic first novel, The Pickwick Papers. Enjoy!

Notes For December 2nd, 2022

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This Day In Literary History

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On December 2nd, 1867, the legendary English writer Charles Dickens gave the first performance of his public reading tour of the United States. It wasn't Dickens' first visit to America.

He previously visited the United States and Canada in 1842. He spent that time in the U.S. giving lectures, publicly denouncing slavery, and raising support for the enacting of copyright laws.

Dickens' fierce abolitionist convictions didn't endear him to many Americans during his first visit - he even met with then President John Tyler at the White House to discuss the atrocities he'd witnessed while passing through the Southern slave states.

When he returned to England, Dickens wrote American Notes for General Circulation, a travelogue of his visit to America. Filled with scathing satire, the book described not only the horrors of slavery, but also the vulgarity and ill manners of white Southerners.

He also chronicled his visits to prisons and mental institutions and criticized the American press and the poor sanitary conditions of American cities. Despite all this, Dickens had a generally favorable impression of America, though he couldn't forgive the country's insistence on maintaining the practice of slavery.

Twenty-five years later, for his next visit to America, Dickens had planned his first public reading tour. At this time, the 55-year-old writer had become hugely popular in America.

He was moved that the country had finally abolished slavery. So, on November 9th, 1867, Dickens set sail for the United States. He landed in Boston, where he began his public reading tour in America.

Dickens' first reading, like almost of all of his performances on the tour, was sold out. Some fans had slept outside the night before tickets went on sale; as they'd expected, the line for tickets was literally half a mile long.

In attendance for Dickens' first reading in Boston were New England's literary elite, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and Charles Eliot Norton.

Emerson complained that Dickens' performance was too polished for his taste. The legendary American writer Mark Twain saw Dickens read and dismissed the performance as "glittering frostwork." Mostly, however, the performances earned rave reviews.

That Emerson should criticize Dickens' performance as too polished was surprising considering the fact that he was quite ill for most of the tour, suffering from insomnia, exhaustion, the flu, catarrh, and a limp from neuralgia of the foot. He handed out printed cards of apology to his audiences for his sickness.

Dickens' illness didn't prevent him from reaching his audience and delivering his message. When he read his classic novella, A Christmas Carol (1843) in Boston on Christmas Eve, a local factory owner in attendance experienced a Scrooge-like transformation and sent every one of his employees a turkey.

There were some funny experiences on the tour as well. A little girl recognized him on a train, sat down next to him, and told him how much she loved his books.

She also said, "Of course, I do skip some of the very dull parts, once in a while; not the short dull parts, but the long ones." Dickens laughed heartily, then took out his notebook and asked her to elaborate.

Another humorous incident found Dickens recognized by the janitor of the hotel he stayed at in New York. The janitor, a German immigrant, struck up a conversation with him, saying, "Mr. Digguns, you are great, mein herr. Dere is no ent to you! Bedder and bedder. Vot next!"

Realizing that his health was declining and believing that there would be no more American tours for him, at his last performance in New York, Dickens ended his show with the following announcement:

Ladies and gentlemen, the shadow of one word has impended over me all this evening, and the time has come at last when the shadow must fall. It is but a very short one, but the weight of such things is not measurable by their length, and two much shorter words express the whole round of our human existence. Ladies and gentlemen, I beg to bid you farewell - and I pray God bless you, and God bless the land in which I leave you.

Charles Dickens died three years later in 1870, at the age of 58.

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Quote Of The Day

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“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.” - Charles Dickens

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a clip from Dickens Reading Dickens, actor Tim Tully's one man show which depicts Charles Dickens giving one of his public reading performances. Enjoy!

Notes For August 3rd, 2022

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This Day In Literary History

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On August 3rd, 1861, Great Expectations, the classic novel by the legendary English writer Charles Dickens, was published. Specifically, the final installment of the novel was published.

Like most novels of the time, Great Expectations first appeared in a serialized format. It was published in installments in Charles Dickens' own weekly literary magazine, All The Year Round.

Great Expectations tells the tale of Philip "Pip" Pirrip - his unexpected rise from poor orphan boy to wealthy gentleman, and the life lessons he learns in the process. The novel opens on Christmas Eve in 1812.

Pip, then seven years old, is a poor orphan boy being raised by his older sister and her husband. Pip's cruel sister resents having to take care of him and beats him.

Her husband, Joe Gargery, is a kind and humble man who works as the village blacksmith. He becomes a father figure to Pip.

On Christmas Eve, in the village churchyard, little Pip meets a man he at first believes to be a poor, starving soul - until he sees the man's leg shackle. He's actually a convict named Magwitch who just escaped from a prison ship.

He scares Pip into bringing him some food and a file to cut away the shackle. Pip steals the goods from his sister's house and brings them to Magwitch. The convict is surprised and moved by Pip's kindness and generosity.

Later, Pip receives an invitation to the house of Miss Havisham, a wealthy old village woman. Miss Havisham lives with her adopted daughter, Estella, and for several years, Pip visits them regularly and keeps them company.

Miss Havisham is a haunted, ghost-like woman who always wears an old, yellowed wedding dress. She was jilted at the altar - an act of cruelty that scarred her for life. As the years pass, Pip falls in love with Estella.

One day, Miss Havisham tells Pip that he can't visit her anymore because it's time for him to begin his apprenticeship with Joe Gargery. Having tasted the good life at Miss Havisham's, Pip is miserable as an apprentice blacksmith.

He wants to marry Estella, but fears that she will see him as common and beneath her. What he doesn't know is that Miss Havisham is raising Estella to be a cruel woman destined to break men's hearts.

After Estella leaves the village, Pip's fortunes change literally when a lawyer arrives to tell him that he has inherited a large sum of money from an anonymous benefactor, on the condition that he leave for London immediately and become a gentleman. Pip agrees.

In London, he studies with a tutor and lives with his new friend, Herbert Pocket. Pip determines to become a gentleman and is ashamed of his old, common life with Joe Gargery, from whom he grows apart. Pip believes Miss Havisham is his benefactor, and that she wants to make a gentleman of him so he can marry Estella.

One stormy night, Pip learns the truth about his anonymous benefactor. It wasn't Miss Havisham at all - it was Magwitch, the convict he'd befriended years ago on Christmas Eve.

Moved by Pip's compassion, Magwitch left him his money so he could become a gentleman. What's more, Magwitch will soon arrive for a visit. Appalled that he was financed by a convict's fortune, Pip fears that Estella will never marry him.

When Pip is reunited with her and Miss Havisham, he finds that Estella is unhappily married to a man named Bentley Drummle. He also learns the truth about Miss Havisham's jilting. When the old woman accidentally sets herself on fire, Pip saves her life.

Later, he decides to flee with Magwitch, who is still wanted by the law. When he makes one last visit to the badly burned Miss Havisham, she repents and asks Pip to forgive her, which he does.

With the help of his friend Herbert Pocket and Herbert's friend, Startop, Pip tries to help Magwitch escape, but the convict is caught thanks to his old enemy, Compeyson - the swindler who jilted Miss Havisham. The two men fight, and Compeyson is killed in the struggle.

A badly injured Magwitch goes to jail, and Pip finally realizes that Magwitch is a good and noble man. He tends to his ailing benefactor, visiting him every day.

Pip soon makes a shocking discovery - Magwitch is Estella's father. He tells him on his deathbed that he wants to marry Estella, and Magwitch dies a happy man.

Penniless again and ill, Pip goes home, where Joe Gargery nurses him back to health. After he recovers, Pip goes into business with Herbert Pocket. Years later, Pip decides to make one last visit to Miss Havisham's old house.

There, he finds Estella wandering about, and learns that her marriage is over. She asks Pip to accept her as a friend, and the novel ends with the hope that they may finally be together.

That's just a threadbare outline of this epic novel, a haunting Gothic classic that must be fully read to be appreciated. This is Charles Dickens at the apex of his power as a storyteller.

Dickens revised the ending of Great Expectations prior to its publication. In the original ending, Pip finds that Estella has remarried following the death of her abusive husband. He tells her that he's glad she became a better person than the girl Miss Havisham raised her to be.

Having lost his true love, Pip never marries. Dickens' friend, writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, told him that this ending was much too sad and encouraged him to change it. So he did, ending the novel on a happier note.

Many scholars and writers prefer the original ending, which they believe is more consistent with the tone of the story. It often appears as an appendix in new editions of the novel.

Great Expectations is considered to be one of the greatest and most sophisticated works of English literature ever written, and rightfully so. It has been adapted for the stage, radio, screen, and television over 250 times.

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Quote Of The Day

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"Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule." - Charles Dickens, from his novel Great Expectations

---

Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features a complete reading of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Enjoy!

Notes For March 31st, 2022

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This Day In Literary History

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On March 31st, 1836, The Pickwick Papers - the classic first novel by legendary English writer Charles Dickens, was published. Like most novels of the time, it first appeared in a serialized format, published in twenty monthly installments.

When the first installment was published on this date, only 400 copies were printed. By the time the 15th installment came out, it was being published in press runs of 40,000 copies.

Originally titled The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, the novel had originally been commissioned by publishers Chapman and Hall as captions to accompany humorous drawings by illustrator Robert Seymour.

The members of the Pickwick Club, founded by a wealthy old gentleman named Samuel Pickwick, travel through remote areas of the English countryside by coach, then report back on their adventures when they return. Alfred Jingle, an English mangling actor, charlatan, and practical joker, joins them and plays tricks on them.

Charles Dickens wasn't the publishers' first choice to write the book, but their senior editor had been impressed by his earlier collection of serialized writings, Sketches by Boz, which had also been written to accompany illustrations.

Sketches combined nonfiction articles with short stories. Dickens was just 21 years old when he wrote them. His Pickwick writings were also originally published under the pseudonym Boz, which was the childhood nickname Dickens had given his brother Augustus.

Robert Seymour had conceived the original idea for Pickwick, but creative control of the series went to Charles Dickens, who took the idea and improved on it vastly. Seymour had previously suffered a nervous breakdown after a nasty row with Gilbert A'Beckett, editor of Figaro in London magazine.

The conflict, over money owed Seymour and the illustrator's parody of another writer's work, resulted in Seymour resigning and A'Beckett mounting a cruel public smear campaign against him. The illustrator returned to work after A'Beckett was replaced as editor.

Now, Seymour found himself in another bad situation. His original idea for Pickwick had been given to someone else, who made it his own and improved it. Seymour was never given credit for his creative input.

To add insult to injury, he wasn't even credited as illustrator. The publisher listed the byline as "Edited by Boz with Illustrations." Before the second installment of Pickwick was completed, a distraught Seymour committed suicide with his shotgun.

Seymour's widow publicly blasted Charles Dickens and the publishers, claiming that the first two installments of Pickwick were her husband's idea, i.e., that he told Dickens what to write. Actually, the opposite was true; Dickens had creative control.

Robert Seymour had struggled to come up with illustrations to compliment Dickens' writing, frustrating the author to the point that he advertised for a new illustrator. After Seymour's death, Dickens took over as editor of the publication and saved it from bankruptcy.

Scholars have agreed that although Robert Seymour came up with the original idea for The Pickwick Papers, if he'd had creative control over the series, the final product would have been completely different and nowhere near as successful.

It was Charles Dickens' distinctive style of writing that made the novel what it was. When The Pickwick Papers was issued in book form, the publishers defended themselves and Dickens with the following disclaimer:

Mr. Seymour never originated or suggested an incident, a phrase, or a word to be found in this book. Mr. Seymour died when only twenty-four pages of this book were published, and when assuredly not forty-eight were written... all of the input from the artist was in response to the words that had already been written.

Taking a final pot shot at the troubled illustrator, the disclaimer goes on to say “that he took his own life through jealousy, as it was well known that Seymour’s sanity had been questioned."

Suicide was considered a scandalous act by Victorian society and a felo de se (felony to self) by the law, so Seymour was denied a Christian burial. His estate went to the government, and his widow couldn't receive any royalties for his work on The Pickwick Papers.

Despite the controversy surrounding its conception, The Pickwick Papers made Charles Dickens' name as a novelist. His second novel would make him a legend. It was named after its main character - a poor orphan boy called Oliver Twist.

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Quote Of The Day

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"'I am ruminating,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'on the strange mutability of human affairs.' 'Ah! I see — in at the palace door one day, out at the window the next. Philosopher, Sir?' 'An observer of human nature, Sir,' said Mr. Pickwick. 'Ah, so am I. Most people are when they've little to do and less to get.'" - Charles Dickens, from The Pickwick Papers

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Vanguard Video

---

Today's video features a complete reading of Charles Dickens' classic first novel, The Pickwick Papers. Enjoy!

Notes For December 17th, 2021

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This Day In Literary History

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On December 17th, 1843, A Christmas Carol, the classic novella by the legendary English writer Charles Dickens, was published in London. (Sometimes the publication date is mistakenly listed as December 19th.)

Dickens began writing the book in October of 1843 and completed it in six weeks, with the final pages written during the first week of December.

After feuding with his publisher over the small amount of money he'd earned for his novel Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens declined a lump-sum payment for A Christmas Carol and chose to take royalties instead.

The novella's first edition run of 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve, but because of high production costs, Dickens only earned £230 and not the £1,000 he expected - and needed badly, as his wife had become pregnant again.

Although it didn't earn him as much as he'd hoped, A Christmas Carol proved to be a huge critical success, something Dickens also needed badly, after the failure of Martin Chuzzlewit.

A scathing satire ahead of its time, Martin Chuzzlewit was controversial for its assault on American hypocrisy and barbarity. Dickens, a ferocious abolitionist, had no use for America, having visited the country and witnessed firsthand the atrocities of slavery.

A Christmas Carol continued to sell well, and soon, the author saw more of a profit. In January of 1844, less than a month after its first edition release, it appeared in a pirated edition.

Dickens sued Farley's Illuminated Library, the publishers of the pirate edition, and won. Unfortunately, the company declared bankruptcy to avoid paying him damages, leaving him no compensation and owing £700 in legal expenses.

To fight future piracy, Dickens periodically tweaked his manuscript for A Christmas Carol and republished it in revised editions, something many writers did back when copyright laws were inadequate or nonexistent.

The piracy of A Christmas Carol was still a bitter disappointment for Dickens, as he felt a special affection for the novella's lessons in love and generosity that he wanted to teach the world.

Dickens based A Christmas Carol on both his own experiences and American writer Washington Irving's tales of the traditional old English Christmas and its customs.

In 1824, when Dickens was twelve years old, his prosperous, middle class father's financial mismanagement ruined the family. Unable to pay his creditors, he was arrested for debt. The Dickens family was sent to debtor's prison.

One family member avoided imprisonment - the precocious, intellectual Charles, who was forced to leave school, pawn his collection of books, and go to work in a factory to pay off his father's debts.

In early 1843, Dickens toured the Cornish tin mines and saw children working in appalling conditions. He also visited one of several London schools that had been set up to educate the city's large population of half-starved, illiterate street children.

Remembering his own horrific experiences as a child laborer, Dickens researched the effect of the Industrial Revolution on poor children. He gave a speech at the Manchester Athenaeum urging employers and workers to work together to fight illiteracy.

Dickens wrote and planned to publish a low-cost political pamphlet, An Appeal to the People of England, on Behalf of the Poor Man's Child, but changed his mind and put off the publication.

Instead, he tried to inspire compassion for the poor through his beloved novella, A Christmas Carol. Its main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, had been partly based on Dickens as a child before his family's financial ruin.

As a young boy, he'd had a strong sense of intellectual and class superiority. When he was forced to work alongside other poor children (and adults), his initial humiliation and anger were transformed into a deep, lifelong compassion for the poor.

A Christmas Carol opens on Christmas Eve, seven years after the death of Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner, Jacob Marley. Scrooge is a greedy and heartless moneylender and landlord who overworks and grossly underpays his loyal and hardworking clerk, Bob Cratchit.

Scrooge hates Christmas, and famously dismisses the holiday as humbug. After grudgingly allowing Cratchit to take Christmas Day off, Scrooge leaves for home, where he is haunted by the ghost of Jacob Marley.

Tormented and wrapped in heavy chains built link by link by his sins, Marley warns Scrooge that he will suffer the same fate if he doesn't change his ways. He tells Scrooge that three more spirits will haunt him.

The Ghost of Christmas Past brings Scrooge back to his past, a time when he cared about people and loved Christmas - before tragedy broke his heart and greed warped his soul. The Ghost of Christmas Present exposes Scrooge to the plight of the poor.

The ghost takes Scrooge to observe Bob Cratchit and his family, who are struggling to survive on the slave wages that Scrooge pays him. He also shows Scrooge how his nephew Fred - the son of his beloved sister who died in childbirth - still loves him despite the fact that Scrooge disowned him.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come proves to be the scariest spirit, tormenting Scrooge with a vision of the death of Tiny Tim - Bob Cratchit's crippled and sick little son - which could have been prevented.

He also shows Scrooge a vision of his own death, where nobody mourns him. Scrooge repents, awakening on Christmas morning with joy in his heart, vowing to be kind and keep the spirit of the holiday with him always.

Scrooge spends Christmas Day doing good deeds, including anonymously sending a huge turkey to Bob Cratchit, donating a large sum of money to the poor, and reconciling with his nephew, Fred.

Needless to say, A Christmas Carol became hugely popular, a classic reread every year at Christmastime. Dickens' readers begged him to write another holiday story, so from 1844-48, he published some Christmas-themed short stories.

They sold well, but the critics trashed them. By 1849, Dickens decided that he was done writing Christmas stories, but he wanted to reach out to people with his "Carol philosophy." So, he began performing public readings of A Christmas Carol during the holiday season.

Dickens' first public reading of A Christmas Carol took place in 1853. It was an unabridged reading; for later performances, Dickens prepared an abridged text to read. He would perform 127 public readings of his holiday novella.

His last performance was in 1870 - the year of his death. In 1867, while on his first and only public reading tour of America, Dickens performed a reading in Boston on Christmas Eve.

One of the spectators, a factory owner named Fairbanks, was so moved by the story that he experienced a Scrooge-like transformation and sent every one of his employees a turkey.

A Christmas Carol would be adapted numerous times for the stage, screen, radio, and television. The first stage play adaptation opened on February 5th, 1844 - less than two months after the novella was published - and became a hit.

The novella would be adapted for the screen numerous times. The best known and best loved film version is the 1951 British production starring Alistair Sim as Scrooge.

In 2009, Disney released a 3D animated adaptation starring the voice of Jim Carrey as Scrooge, whose name would enter the English lexicon as a synonym for the word miser.

A Christmas Carol remains one of the all-time greatest works of English literature and a treasured holiday classic.

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Quote Of The Day

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"It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection and disease in sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour." - Charles Dickens

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Vanguard Video

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Today's video features a complete reading of Charles Dickens' classic novella, A Christmas Carol. Enjoy!