Why? The question really needs to be asked. Why all the hoopla, the adaptations, reprints, books, comics, tweets, no doubt Facebook pages too. Did we do this for Thackeray last year? Will we do it for Wilkie Collins? Or even George Eliot? A deafening silence brings the answer. Dickens is,
As The Old Curiosity Shop appeared in instalments, Charles Dickens was inundated with letters from readers, all begging him not to kill off Little Nell. Queen Victoria found Oliver Twist so “excessively interesting” that she pressed it on the prime minister, Lord Melbourne. It was this response, from high to
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