Charles Dickens – Deborah Siddoway

Writing Dickens – Week 3

I don’t know how Dickens did it. Right now, I am on week 3 of writing in instalments, exactly as Dickens did, 170 years ago. So far, I have written chapters 1 to 6, publishing them in the same increments as Dickens did: 1 April 1854 1–3 Book I 8 April 1854 4–5 15 AprilContinue reading “Writing Dickens – Week 3”

Writing Dickens

Today marks 170 years since Charles Dickens advertised what would become his latest novel to his public. That novel was Hard Times, one that he would serialise between April and August 1854 in his periodic journal Household Words. We are so used to reading Dickens’s novels as whole books that it is sometimes difficult toContinue reading “Writing Dickens”

Lessons by Ian McEwan

Lessons by Ian McEwan My rating: 5 of 5 stars Charting the long story of one man’s life, as he tries to piece together his listless wandering from one missed opportunity to the next, the book begins with a piano lesson, where eleven year old Roland makes the same mistake he always makes as heContinue reading “Lessons by Ian McEwan”

Chatterbox – A Victorian Journal

I started reading The Cinder Path by Catherine Cookson, the fourth novel of hers I have turned to as I embrace my Northern heritage after moving back up here. I will come back to that book when I have finished reading it. But one of the things I want to explore is the historical settingContinue reading “Chatterbox – A Victorian Journal”