Blurb: “As a boy, William Bellman commits one small cruel act that has unforeseen and terrible consequences. By the time he is grown, with a family of his own, he seems to be a man blessed by fortune – until tragedy strikes. Desperate to save the one precious thing he has left, William enters into… Read More Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield
Could this sweet face be that of the original for Estella? After finishing Johnson’s chapter on Dickens’s ultimately heartbreaking relationship with Maria Beadnell I find myself asking that question. Charles Dickens met Maria Beadnell when he was 17 years old. He got along famously with Maria’s family from the start. He and all the Beadnell… Read More Edgar Johnson on Charles Dickens: Maria Beadnell
I didn’t have time to fully digest having finished Poor Miss Finch before I raced off that bragging post that I’d finished it. I was so eager to entice others to read it I didn’t take due time thinking more about it. That will teach me to be such a vulgar thing. Even though this… Read More More on Poor Miss Finch, Sorry
Paperback: 688 pages Publisher: Penguin Classics (February 1, 1998) Language: English ISBN-10: 0140435808 ISBN-13: 978-0140435801 Before Dickens was a novelist he was, hold onto your bonnets, a reporter with a truly masterful grasp of shorthand. (Okay, not really surprising OR earth-shattering. I’m just having a very slow day and am looking for any bit of… Read More More Edgar Johnson on Charles Dickens
I raced to the end of Poor Miss Finch this afternoon, galloping to the finish. If you read my earlier post you’ll know this is a book about a young blind woman named Lucilla Finch. She’s engaged to a man, Oscar Dubourg, who’s turned blue from the chemical silver nitrate, a remedy he’s taking to… Read More Poor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins – Pt. 2
Charles Dickens: His Tragedies and Triumphs by Edgar Johnson When Charles Dickens was a young boy, as the story goes, he and his father strolled past a house called Gads Hill Place. The young Charles was smitten by the house, and longed to one day live in it. His father, John Dickens, told him if… Read More Edgar Johnson on Charles Dickens
Is this book ever heating up. Here’s the scenario: An Italian widow comes to live with the Finch family, to be a companion to the blind daughter who was the product of Rev. Finch’s marriage to his first wife, a woman who promptly died after the birth of little Lucilla. Lucilla was born with her… Read More Poor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins
