Over the last few days, we’ve been pondering, in a series of posts, the literary history of Father Christmas and Santa Claus. Yesterday, we looked at how Santa’s working relationship with the soft drinks industry is more complicated than we might think. Today, we’re moving from the world of drink to the world of food … Read more
We’ve been running this blog now for two years. When we posted our first literary blog post, on 1 December 2012, we set out to publish a short post every day, or almost every day. To mark the second birthday of Interesting Literature, we would like to present ‘The Advent Calendar of Literature’. Every day … Read more
As the nights are beginning to draw in and Halloween approaches, how about something to make the flesh creep and send a shiver down the spine? Charles Dickens was a master of the macabre, whether it’s in his Christmas ghost stories such as A Christmas Carol, in the chilling Gothic emptiness of Satis House in Great … Read more
By Viola van de Sandt Charles Dickens has of course become famous for his intricately woven tales of social injustice and rampant poverty. Yet the author also provided his readership with an enormous host of intriguing, elusive, bizarre and sometimes even grotesque characters, most of whom he gave especially fitting and equally fantastic names. For … Read more
Curious Dickens trivia relating to his life and work
1. Dickens’s house had a secret door in the form of a fake bookcase. The fake books included titles such as ‘The Life of a Cat’ in 9 volumes.Â
This was at his home at Gad’s Hill, in Kent. He also reputedly had a series of fake titles called ‘The History of a Short Chancery Suit’ in 47 volumes (a reference to the very long Chancery case which inspired his novel, Bleak House).