Download or read book Dickens and Staplehurst A Biography of a Rail Crash written by Gerald Dickens and published by Olympia Publishers. This book was released on 2021-10-28 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Staplehurst rail crash of June 9th, 1865 which claimed ten lives, might have passed relatively unnoticed but for the presence of a celebrity passenger among the survivors. Charles Dickens, returning from France on the ill-fated boat train from Folkestone to London, was to be profoundly affected by the experience. In a fascinating exploration of the circumstances surrounding the disaster and probing insight into Dickens' personal life, the writer's great-great-grandson, Gerald Dickens, examines his secret relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan and professional motivation in the years either side of the accident. Questions concerning the conduct of the inquest into the crash and apportioning of blame are raised that remain unresolved even today. Striking parallels are drawn with more recent disasters and the signs of wrestling with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are evident in the account of Dickens' final years, powerfully reflected in the stirring ghost story The Signalman.
Download or read book Charles Dickens and the Staplehurst Train Crash written by Peter Lewis and published by . This book was released on 2018-03-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five years to the day from the Staplehurst train accident, Charles Dickens died. How did the accident affect him?
Download or read book The Signal Man Illustrated written by Charles Dickens and published by . This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: """The Signal-Man"" is a horror/mystery story by Charles Dickens, first published as part of the Mugby Junction collection in the 1866 Christmas edition of All the Year Round.The railway signal-man of the title tells the narrator of an apparition that has been haunting him. Each spectral appearance precedes a tragic event on the railway on which the signalman works. The signalman's work is at a signal-box in a deep cutting near a tunnel entrance on a lonely stretch of the railway line, and he controls the movements of passing trains. When there is danger, his fellow signalmen alert him by telegraph and alarms. Three times, he receives phantom warnings of danger when his bell rings in a fashion that only he can hear. Each warning is followed by the appearance of the spectre, and then by a terrible accident.The first accident involves a terrible collision between two trains in the tunnel. Dickens may have based this incident on the Clayton Tunnel crash[1] that occurred in 1861, five years before he wrote the story. Readers in 1866 would have been familiar with this major disaster. The second warning involves the mysterious death of a young woman on a passing train. The final warning is a premonition of the signalman's own death"
Download or read book The Great Charles Dickens Scandal written by Michael Slater and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-14 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of the sensational rumors surrounding the Victorian author—and the attempts to cover them up: “Riveting . . . a scholarly detective story” (The Boston Globe). Charles Dickens was regarded as the great proponent of hearth and home in Victorian Britain, but in 1858 this image was nearly shattered. With the breakup of his marriage that year, rumors of a scandalous relationship he may have conducted with the young actress Ellen “Nelly” Ternan flourished. For the remaining twelve years of his life, Dickens managed to contain the gossip. After his death, surviving family members did the same. But when the author’s last living son died in 1934, there was no one to discourage rampant speculation. Dramatic revelations came from every corner—over Nelly’s role as Dickens’s mistress, their clandestine meetings, and even his possibly fathering an illegitimate child. This book presents the most complete account of the scandal and ensuing cover-up ever published. Drawing on the author's letters and other archival sources not previously available, Dickens scholar Michael Slater investigates what Dickens did or may have done, then traces the way the scandal was elaborated over succeeding generations. Slater shows how various writers concocted outlandish yet plausible theories while newspapers and book publishers vied for salacious information. With its tale of intrigue and a cast of well-known figures from Thackeray and Shaw to Orwell and Edmund Wilson, this book will delight not only Dickens fans but anyone who appreciate tales of mystery, cover-up, and clever detection. “Slater’s work is a fascinating investigation into the nature of scandal itself as much as it is a look at the particular episode.” —TheDaily Beast
Download or read book The Staplehurst Disaster written by Eric Jones-Evans and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Historic Railway Disasters written by Oswald Stevens Nock and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Charles Dickens s Networks written by Jonathan H. Grossman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-03 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the rise of the passenger transport network in the nineteenth century and the impact it made on Dickens's work.
Download or read book Victorian Tales Terror on the Train written by Terry Deary and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-02-16 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Horrible Histories... A crowded train takes a wrong turn and hurtles at full speed into a section of track that should have been closed for repair. Among the passengers is the writer Charles Dickens. Can young workman Tommy stop the train in time and save the lives of those on board – or is it already too late? In this dramatic re-telling of one of the worst rail accidents in Victorian Britain, the Staplehurst Railway disaster, Terry Deary's Victorian Tales explore the fascinating world of the Victorians, including many of the incredible achievements and breakthroughs that took place, through the eyes of children who could have lived at the time. This new edition features notes for the reader to help extend learning and exploration of the historical period.
Download or read book The Last Dickens written by Matthew Pearl and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his most enthralling novel yet, the critically acclaimed author Matthew Pearl reopens one of literary history’s greatest mysteries. The Last Dickens is a tale filled with the dazzling twists and turns, the unerring period details, and the meticulous research that thrilled readers of the bestsellers The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow. Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens’s untimely death reaches the office of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await the arrival of Dickens’s unfinished novel. But when Daniel’s body is discovered by the docks and the manuscript is nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the novel that he hopes will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel’s killer. Danger and intrigue abound on the journey to England, for which Osgood has chosen Rebecca Sand, Daniel’s older sister, to assist him. As they attempt to uncover Dickens’s final mystery, Osgood and Rebecca find themselves racing the clock through a dangerous web of literary lions and drug dealers, sadistic thugs and blue bloods, and competing members of Dickens’s inner circle. They soon realize that understanding Dickens’s lost ending is a matter of life and death, and the hidden key to stopping a murderous mastermind.
Download or read book The Invisible Woman written by Claire Tomalin and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-08-29 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan met in 1857; she was 18, a hard-working actress performing in his production of The Frozen Deep, and he was 45, the most lionized writer in England. Out of their meeting came a love affair that lasted thirteen years and destroyed Dickens’s marriage while effacing Nelly Ternan from the public record. In this remarkable work of biography and scholarly reconstruction, the acclaimed biographer of Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys and Jane Austen rescues Nelly from the shadows of history, not only returning the neglected actress to her rightful place, but also providing a compelling portrait of the great Victorian novelist himself. The result is a thrilling literary detective story and a deeply compassionate work that encompasses all those women who were exiled from the warm, well-lighted parlors of Victorian England.
Download or read book The Signalman written by Charles Dickens and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the 9th of June 1865, Charles Dickens was travelling aboard the Folkestone to London Boat Train with his mistress and her mother, when it derailed while crossing a viaduct near Staplehurst in Kent. The train plunged down a bank into a dry river bed, killing ten passengers, and badly wounding forty. Dickens was profoundly affected by the disaster, and a year later, he published The Signalman, a supremely atmospheric ghost story in which the narrator, while investigating a dank and lonely railway cutting, meets the signalman who works there. His new acquaintance appears to live under the shadow of an unbearable secret, haunted by an apparition whose appearance prefigures terrible rail accidents. Drawing on Dickens own experiences, and introduced by Simon Bradley, author of The Railways, The Signalman is both an important piece of rail history, and a sinister tale which will make you think twice next time you enter the quiet carriage.
Download or read book The Life of Our Lord written by Charles Dickens and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Dickens's other Christmas classic, with a new introduction by Dickens's great-great-grandson, Gerald Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens wrote The Life of Our Lord during the years 1846-1849, just about the time he was completing David Copperfield. In this charming, simple retelling of the life of Jesus Christ, adapted from the Gospel of St. Luke, Dickens hoped to teach his young children about religion and faith. Since he wrote it exclusively for his children, Dickens refused to allow publication. For eighty-five years the manuscript was guarded as a precious family secret, and it was handed down from one relative to the next. When Dickens died in 1870, it was left to his sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth. From there it fell to Dickens's son, Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, with the admonition that it should not be published while any child of Dickens lived. Just before the 1933 holidays, Sir Henry, then the only living child of Dickens, died, leaving his father's manuscript to his wife and children. He also bequeathed to them the right to make the decision to publish The Life of Our Lord. By majority vote, Sir Henry's widow and children decided to publish the book in London. In 1934, Simon & Schuster published the first American edition, which became one of the year's biggest bestsellers.
Download or read book The Meaning of Night written by Michael Cox and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2012-05-10 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award 'A novel of fate and free will, forensic detection and blind love, crime and its justifications . . . finely tuned yet extravagantly complex' Evening Standard A cold October night, 1854. In a dark passageway, an innocent man is stabbed to death. So begins the extraordinary story of Edward Glyver, book lover, scholar and murderer. As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. This seems the stuff of dreams, until a chance discovery convinces Glyver that he was right: greatness does await him, along with immense wealth and influence. And he will stop at nothing to win back a prize that he now knows is rightfully his. Glyver's path leads him from the depths of Victorian London, with its foggy streets, brothels and opium dens, to Evenwood, one of England's most enchanting country houses. His is a story of betrayal and treachery, of death and delusion, of ruthless obsession and ambition. And at every turn, driving Glyver irresistibly onwards, is his deadly rival: the poet-criminal Phoebus Rainsford Daunt. Thirty years in the writing, The Meaning of Night is a stunning achievement. Full of drama and passion, it is an enthralling novel that will captivate readers right up to its final thrilling revelation.
Download or read book The Mutual Friend written by Frederick Busch and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1994 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subject of Frederick Busch's extraordinary fiction, The Mutual Friend, is Charles Dickens. First published in 1978, Busch's portrait of the Chief (or the Inimitable, as Dickens calls himself) was immediately hailed as a lively, accurate, and brilliantly imagined novel of the great Victorian and his age. Busch's guide to Dickens' world is George Dolby, the Chief's factotum in his last years. The reminiscence begins with the Great American Tour of 1867-68, Dickens is ill and crotchety but ever eager to dazzle the New World with his dramatic readings. Through Dolby we come to a circle of characters around Dickens, among them his long-suffering wife Kate and the actress Ellen Ternan, mistress to the Inimitable. Of Busch's compelling mastery over his larger-than-life subject, the English critic Angus Wilson writes, "Mr. Busch gives us Dickens in all his genius and makes us understand how that genius worked."
Download or read book Dickens London written by Charles Dickens and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Mystery of Charles Dickens written by A.N. Wilson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography A lively and insightful biographical celebration of the imaginative genius of Charles Dickens, published in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of his death. Charles Dickens was a superb public performer, a great orator and one of the most famous of the Eminent Victorians. Slight of build, with a frenzied, hyper-energetic personality, Dickens looked much older than his fifty-eight years when he died—an occasion marked by a crowded funeral at Westminster Abbey, despite his waking wishes for a small affair. Experiencing the worst and best of life during the Victorian Age, Dickens was not merely the conduit through whom some of the most beloved characters in literature came into the world. He was one of them. Filled with the twists, pathos, and unusual characters that sprang from this novelist’s extraordinary imagination, The Mystery of Charles Dickens looks back from the legendary writer’s death to recall the key events in his life. In doing so, he seeks to understand Dickens’ creative genius and enduring popularity. Following his life from cradle to grave, it becomes clear that Dickens’s fiction drew from his life—a fact he acknowledged. Like Oliver Twist, Dickens suffered a wretched childhood, then grew up to become not only a respectable gentleman but an artist of prodigious popularity. Dickens knew firsthand the poverty and pain his characters endured, including the scandal of a failed marriage. Going beyond standard narrative biography, A. N. Wilson brilliantly revisits the wellspring of Dickens’s vast and wild imagination, to reveal at long last why his novels captured the hearts of nineteenth century readers—and why they continue to resonate today. The Mystery of Charles Dickens is illustrated with 30 black-and-white images.
Download or read book Little Nell written by Simon Gray and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forty-five years old and married, Charles Dickens falls passionately in love with Nelly Ternan, an actress almost thirty years his junior. They begin a long affair which ends only in Dickens' death in 1870, so that when, eventually, Nelly marries, she has thirteen clandestine years to explain away. In 1922, her son determines to uncover the truth.
