BleakChesneyWold

                                                Another side to 'Bleak House'  "The rain is ever falling, drip, drip, drip, by day and night, upon the broad flagged terrace - pavement, The Ghosts Walk."                       Personally I regard 'Bleak House' as Charles Dickens's masterpiece: The longest of his novels, and one that includes 'social concerns' with its blistering attacks on both rural and urban poverty. But also looms as a forerunner of the later sensation novel genre-with illegitimacy, scandal, stalking, drug use, spontaneous combustion as significant themes. There is also a detective story, an infamous long drawn out legal battle where only the lawyers are victorious. Not to mention a ghost tale.  In chapter seven of 'Bleak House' we are introduced to 'Chesney Wold', the country mansion in...

                                   Very Poetic and Atmospheric  historical novel - Magnificent  Alan Humm edits the arts journal 'One Hand Clapping' and has had two poetry collections published. 'The Sparkler' is his first novel, published by Vine Leaves Press.  This is certainly quality writing. Alan Humm uses fiction as a means of  exploring what he considers to be 'gaps' in historians' knowledge of Dickens's life: A surprising challenge at first as Dickens has had so many biographers, and some potential readers may feel that the novel veers towards the 'unknowable' Dickens.At any rate, Mr Humm has cited the two books that have inspired him in creating 'The Sparkler' as being 'Becoming Dickens-The Invention of a Novelist' by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and 'The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi, Laughter, Madness and 'The Story of Britain's Greatest Comedian' by Andrew Mconell S...

                                                         A Comparison      Les Foins (Haymaker)  by    Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884), from 1877.Public Domain, courtesy of 'Wikipedia'. The purpose of this post is to look at the plight of two fictional characters 'Lady Dedlock' and 'Tess', created some 40 years apart, but dramatically  depict how a woman who had a child 'out of wedlock' could be 'ruined'. Both Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy were highly critical of the treatment of their plight. A great deal of  Charles Dickens's 'Bleak House' (first published via installments 1852-1853)  concerns hidden past, and how the power that those individuals who have discovered a secret  about another person can wield. Lady Honoria Dedlock,  has had an illegitimate child before her marriage. She...

                        Transparent and Grotesque ? Or a Good Sort?                                             Illustration  ' Guppy puzzling over the portrait of Lady Dedlock'  Copyright Gerry Mooney 2023 and reproduced with the kind permission of the artist   /  https://gerrymooneyillustratingdickens.com" ;            For those who haven't read Dickens's masterpiece 'Bleak House', it is hard to sum up Mr Guppy's role. A minor legal clerk who desperately aspires to be more than he is. A small fish desperately mimicking the big fish and coming unstuck.Dickens may have been thinking of an actual Mr Guppy from the case 'Stevens v Guppy' which reached the Chancery Court in 1824, when choosing the name SHATTO .   Yet in his own way, Mr Guppy pl...

                           Can  Chesney Wold Be Located    ?                                                      Haunted House by John Atkinson Grimshaw ( Public Domain courtesy of Wiki Gallery )   Dickens ninth novel 'Bleak House' appeared in installments from March 1852 until 1853.  A major theme concerns the legendary Jarndyce v Jarndyce case featured in the Chancery court : A  dreary legal dispute regarding a will which drags on year after year, effectively destroying the lives of potential benefactors, Predictably, once the case is settled, it is discovered that all the money held in the estate has been devoured by legal fees. The chapters set in the area surrounding the Chancery are claustrophobic and dark. 'Bleak House' also contains some...