January 20, 2012

• Year of Dickens

  As my mother recently posted, she and I are doing a year-long alliteration.

  Donna and Daughter (in this case, that’s me, although she has two others, plus one grand-daughter…)are dedicated to delving into the delightful, dark, and dreary documents from the desk of Dickens BUT destined to be dragged by Dickens’ demanding dictation, we are free to filter with fiction, facts, fantasy, and further flights that find our fancy.

  

  I decided that I wanted to read ALL of his works (fiction, non-fiction, short stories, articles, etc ALL included) and that my plan of attack was to read them in order.  I started with Barnaby Rudge, one of the two historical novels Dickens ever wrote (the other being Tale of Two Cities).  If you research this work closely, you will find that it was actually published much later than other works, but he WROTE it first, and its publication was delayed.  Therefore I still considered it worthy to be his first, and thus my first.  Plus, I had never even heard of it, and that intrigued me.  It was also quoted as being the “least loved and least read” of Dickens’ works.  Poor thing.  I needed to give it the benefit of the doubt.

  And boy was it worth it.

  Let me tell you, BR (as I affectionately type it) gets some tough reviews.  As I was reading, I researched some summaries and analyses just to make sure I was following what was going on.  It is set during the time of the Gordon Riots which I really was clueless about.  But I found it FASCINATING! Plus there is a murder mystery that runs throughout and anyone who knows me knows I love a good murder mystery!
  He was also criticized because he named the book after the character Barnaby Rudge (Jr or Sr is left to your own decisions) and critics claimed that readers can’t identify with Barnaby as much as Dicken’s other famous characters.  I haven’t read much of Dickens, and therefore haven’t found myself particularly drawn to a character yet, but I thoroughly enjoyed Barnaby Jr and did in fact sympathize with him, and perhaps more so his mother, and found myself distinctly interested in what happened to him.
  It does also have some truly funny parts that highlight Dickens’ famous wit, and I really liked that.

  It was definitely slow going – I’m not going to lie.  But once the action got started, I was hooked.

  A few things I found really cool:
  *The character Barnaby Rudge Jr has a pet raven named Grip who can talk and does a novelty act of sorts throughout the book.  He is Barnaby’s constant companion.  Grip was based on Dickens’ own pet raven(s) of which he explains in the prologue.  BUT this very bird inspired Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven.  I love knowing things like that.

  *The phrase “being read the Riot Act” or some variation thereof was started from the source of this novel.  The group of rioters in the Gordon Riots in 1780 was read the Riot Act and the phrase pops up at least twice in the novel.  It’s nice to truly know the origin of that phrase, since it is one I’ve been known to use.

  *and Mom, you’re the only one who will appreciate this, but I came across a word from our Page-A-Day calendar of Forgotten English – and I was able to understand it because I had learned it a few days earlier!  Very cool!

  A good source for more info on this novel and the history behind it can be found here.  I’ve also found the Oxford Reader’s Companion to Dickens to be an invaluable assistance with these “definitely difficult documents”

   

   

  • 9:49 pm
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