The Desk Where Dickens Sat To Write Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend And The Mystery of Edwin Drood Has Been Bought By The Charles Dickens Museum In London

The British newspaper the Telegraph reports on the purchase of beloved author Charles Dickens' desk for the Charles Dickens Musuem in London.

The desk where Charles Dickens wrote Great Expectations and his final, unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood has been saved for the nation.

The Charles Dickens Museum in London has been given a grant of more than £780,000 by the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) to buy the desk and chair which he used in his final home, Gad's Hill Place in Kent.
 

They had been passed down through the Dickens family after the author's death in 1870 but were auctioned for the Great Ormond Street Charitable Trust in 2004.
 

Since then, the furniture where Dickens sat to write Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood has been in private ownership, and could have been sold at public auction if it had not been secured with the grant from the NHMF.  

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11502701/Charles-Dickens-desk-saved-for-the-nation.html

Happy Birthday To Crime Writer Charles Dickens

As Biography.com notes, today is the birthday of Charles Dickens.

British novelist Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England. Over the course of his writing career, he wrote the beloved classic novels Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. On June 9, 1870, Dickens died of a stroke in Kent, England, leaving his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished.

You can read the rest of the piece and watch a video via the below link:

http://www.biography.com/people/charles-dickens-9274087 

Charles Dickens covered crime in many of his novels, including Bleak House and Oliver Twist.

You can also read Terrie Farley Moran's piece on Dickens the crime writer at criminalelement.com via the below link:

http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2011/08/charles-dickens-crime-writer

Why Charles Dickens Is Still Relevant: 'Great Expectations' On PBS' Masterpiece Sunday Evening

 

PBS offers a short video on the showing of Great Expectations on PBS' Masterpiece Sunday night.

You can watch the video via the below link:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2216835068/

You can also read Linda Stasi's New York Post review via the below link:

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/great_stuff_OgrtKGv40Nay6sPzPjSviK

Note: I've recently watched and enjoyed Masterpiece's adaptation of Dickens' Little Dorritt on Comcast's On Demand. I've also recently watched and enjoyed Masterpiece's adaptations of Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop, Little Dorritt and Bleak House.