This post is the fourth of five for Charles Dickens Month hosted by Amanda over at Fig and Thistle.
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This is my very late Charles Dickens post. I was over at The
Dickens at work in his study at Gad's Hill Place. _The Guardian_. Photograph: Rex Features
Guardian and looking over their articles for the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens and found a couple that I’d like to share here.
The first is about the story that “inspired” Charles Dickens to write a version and publish it in Four Ghost Stories in 1861. The word “inspired” is enclosed in quotations because according to Thomas Heaphey, Dickens plagiarized it. Thomas Heaphey was an artist and he claimed to have come up with the narrative about seeing a beautiful ghost who wanted her picture sketched.
Another article is about Dickens and his minor characters. I liked what he had to say about characters:
Dickens had, and has, the ability to catch life on the hop. He sees things that other writers miss. He might have been a neurologist, so accurate are his descriptions of nervous tics and sudden, seemingly inexplicable, outbursts of temper. He records truncated, illiterate speech like a rescuing angel, as is the case with Jo, the crossing-sweeper, who is one of his grandest creations.
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He is the chronicler of everyday lunacy, that state of near-madness the hurt and dispossessed assume as a carapace to protect themselves from the sane enemies in their midst. He is not afraid to suggest that there are human beings who are skin deep.
The last article I’m going to share is about Charles Dickens and interior decorating. Apparently, he had a knack for interiors. Me, I was already drooling when I got to the picture of his library.
The Library at 48 Doughty Street, London. _The Guardian_. Photograph: Charles Dickens Museum
I also knew through browsing the Charles Dickens @ 200 series at The Guardian that there is a new Charles Dickens biography by Simon Callow called Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World. Here is the product description from Amazon.co.uk:
An entertaining biography of Charles Dickens by one of our finest actors
Acclaimed actor and writer Simon Callow captures the essence of Charles Dickens in a sparkling biography that explores the central importance of the theatre to the life of the greatest storyteller in the English language.
From his early years as a child entertainer in Portsmouth to his reluctant retirement from ‘these garish lights’ just before his death, Dickens was obsessed with the stage. Not only was he a dazzling mimic who wrote, acted in and stage-managed plays, all with fanatical perfectionism; as a writer he was a compulsive performer, whose very imagination was theatrical, both in terms of plot devices and construction of character.
Like many actors, Dickens felt the need to be completed by contact with his audience. He was the original ‘celebrity’ author, who attracted thousands of adoring fans to his readings in Britain and across the Atlantic, in which he gave voice to his unforgettable cast of characters.
In Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World, Callow brings his own unique insight to a life driven by performance and showmanship. He reveals an exuberant and irrepressible talent, whose ‘inimitable’ wit and personality crackle off the page.
And that’s my Charles Dickens post for this week. 
section of the Reading Group but it would be nice to read about what other people are thinking as they go through the book as well.
