Spontaneous Human Combustion: SHC Aug 28, 2008
Charles Dickens used SHC in his novel, Bleak House, to kill a heavy drinking character adding plausibility to the theory that excessive alcohol consumption could spark a fire by flammable gases the substance metabolizes. Selected Cases. (Suite101.com)
Alaska deserves better than corrupt politics and Big Oil Aug 21, 2008
I dare say this lawsuit is in danger of becoming a modern day Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, the lawsuit created by Dickens in "Bleak House" that financially and morally bankrupted all who participated in its endless execution. Bird TLC will also say goodbye to its migrating friends at the event as they always do in late summer. (Anchorage Daily News)
Master of sex and sensibility Aug 9, 2008
" Davies is the daddy where adaptation is concerned. It is Davies who is responsible for bringing a steaming Darcy out of the lake in Pride and Prejudice; Davies who juggled Bleak House into a series of cliffhanger endings in his recent adaptation of the Dickens classic; Davies who devised enough dialogue and plot to make the 18th-century pornographic novel Fanny Hill suitable for prime time. But he is also responsible for adapting some modern novels that may well become classics - The Line of... (Sydney Morning Herald -- Entertainment)
Victorian murder mystery inspires book prize winner Jul 16, 2008
The figure of Mr Whicher is believed to have inspired the creation of Sergeant Cuff in Collins' The Moonstone and Dickens' all-knowing Inspector Bucket in Bleak House as well as Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Rosie Boycott, the former newspaper editor and chair of the prize's judging panel, said the winning book had been a unanimous choice. (Independent)
In darkest Dickens Jun 28, 2008
In my middle years, it would have been a toss-up between Dombey and Son and Bleak House. Now (is that a knock on the door I hear. (Globe and Mail)
Dickens Unplugged: Great expectations are fulfilled Jun 11, 2008
Unless I blinked and missed it, there is no significant reference to Hard Times, Barnaby Rudge, or Dombey and Son, while Bleak House - one of the longest and greatest novels of them all - is reduced to a mere quatrain. This is certainly no show for devoted keepers of the Dickensian flame. (Telegraph.co.uk)
Dickens Unplugged Jun 10, 2008
There is no need to have read the books - this is aimed squarely at a US tourist audience who will be familiar with Lionel Bart's Oliver, will have seen the BBC's Bleak House and David Copperfield on PSB, and know David Lean's Great Expectations. Bart's Where Is Love. (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
Hidden England May 11, 2008
In fact, Dickens used Rockingham as inspiration for Chesney Wold, the estate in his novel "Bleak House.". The castle's ramparts enclose 12 acres of sweeping lawns, with formal and informal gardens set among the medieval fortifications. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PA)
Rowling in passionate plea over Potter encyclopedia Apr 17, 2008
anyone can lift astonishingly large proportions of an author's work and present it as their own," Ms Rowling said. AP reports: Until Rowling's testimony, trial testimony was highly cerebral, with duelling experts weighing in on the guide's potential worth to obsessive fans and serious academics. At times, it was hard to remember that the discussion was about a series of children's books. Jeri Johnson, a dean of English at the University of Oxford's Exeter College, praised Rowling's seven novels... (Sydney Morning Herald -- Entertainment)
Rowling begs judge to block 'Harry Potter' guide Apr 17, 2008
He likened the trial to the story Charles Dickens told in "Bleak House," a novel about the pain caused by endlessly drawn-out suits in the 19th Century British judiciary system. Patterson predicted a similar fate for the Lexicon case. (MSNBC -- News)
The birth of the detective Apr 12, 2008
Dickens (whose character of Bucket in Bleak House was broadly based on Whicher's friend and boss Charley Field) knew Whicher and had eulogised the new breed of detective as "models of modernity" in several magazine articles and stories. Until now, the trend in fiction had been for crime stories about dashing crooks. (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
IN MY LIBRARY: MICHAEL MCKEAN Feb 10, 2008
"I'm working my way through Dickens in order of appearance - next stop, 'Bleak House!' " he tells The Post's Barbara Hoffman. "In between all of these, I'll do a Michael Connelly or, especially, a Rex Stout mystery.". (New York Post -- Opinions)
Atone for your speed-reading habits Feb 8, 2008
I will never forget the opening of Dickens Bleak House, and how he described London so thoroughly you could see each speck of dirt, each layer of filth beneath the first. It flowed like poetry and held symbolic meaning in each turn of phrase, forcing you to ponder the possibilities. (Albany Democrat-Herald, OR)
Editorial: Appeals courts need deadline Feb 2, 2008
In Bleak House, Charles Dickens described a similar process. In that story the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce has gone on for longer than anyone can remember. (Albany Democrat-Herald, OR)
Sex ... but properly, please Jan 21, 2008
But what has clinched his reputation are robust TV retellings of literary classics by Dickens ("Bleak House"), Thackeray ("Vanity Fair"), Defoe ("Moll Flanders"), George Eliot ("Middlemarch"). and Jane Austen. (CNN -- Showbiz)
'The king of adapters' Jan 19, 2008
" Davies is in a position to know. At 71, he reigns as the King of Adapters. His long list of Emmy- and Peabody-winning projects includes adaptations of modern fiction such as the splendid British miniseries "House of Cards" (and two sequels) as well as the Pierce Brosnan-starring thriller "The Tailor of Panama" and the two "Bridget Jones" films. But what has clinched his reputation are robust TV retellings of literary classics by Dickens ("Bleak House"), Thackeray ("Vanity Fair"), Defoe ("Moll... (Athens Banner-Herald)
Present day Jarndyce Jan 15, 2008
If you watched the BBC's Bleak House last year, you'll recognise all the ingredients: a long-running legal dispute, menacing lawyers and, most important, a slow, arcane legal system ... I hope together we will write a different ending to this story than the benighted residents of Bleak House. (Guardian Unlimited -- Society)
God bless Tiny Tim Dec 22, 2007
"There is not a country throughout the earth on which ... [this creature] would not bring a curse." He would not again be so explicit, so angry, until he stepped forward to hold his readers to thunderous account for the life and death of Jo, the wretched crossing sweeper in Bleak House. The street-child is not the only source of darkness in The Haunted Man. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Of Dickens and Darwin Dec 8, 2007
C. Dickens, Bleak House, Bradbury and Evans, 1852-53. P.S. Skell, "Why do we invoke Darwin?" The Scientist, August 29, 2005. (The Scientist)
A Dickens of a Christmas Nov 27, 2007
The BBC attempt to recreate the buzz of their triumphant 2005 Bleak House by applying the same treatment to this most popular of Dickens' tales ... Written by Abi Morgan (Sex Traffic) and starring Anna Maxwell Martin (Bleak House), this drama is part of BBC2's White Season, which promises to explore the experiences of the white working class. (Guardian Unlimited)
Spirit, not spirits, in this Dickens tale, 'Mystery of Edwin Drood' Nov 21, 2007
To be brutally honest, if I must raise a glass of eggnog to Mr. Dickens every year, I'd rather do it by curling up with "Bleak House" next to a roaring fire. But that just goes to show you what a wet blanket of a holiday sprite I am. (Boston Globe)
Kindle Versus The iPhone Nov 21, 2007
Newsweek s Levy was able to download a copy of Charles Dickens Bleak House from Amazon for $1 ... Downloads of classic titles, such as Bleak House, can already be had for free. (Forbes -- Technology)
Hang on to your bonnets ... Nov 18, 2007
North and South and Bleak House are recent examples of the costume genre that managed to look both luscious and real, but even if the grime was convincingly grimy and the photography suitably evocative of the past, I'd bet that neither very closely resembled the physical reality of life in the 1850s ... Before that, the first really modern adaptation I'd seen was the early 1985 Bleak House with Denholm Elliott as John Jarndyce. (Guardian Unlimited)
Sickly heroinesWhat were the vapours that Bronte & Austen ladies died of? Oct 25, 2007
I asked doctors of both medicine and literature to consider three heroines - Marianne in Sense and Sensibility, Cathy in Wuthering Heights and the glacial Lady Dedlock in Bleak House - and to tell me, please - what ailed them ... Did Lady Dedlock in Bleak House commit suicide ... Bleak House is essentially a campaigning novel in which Dickens draws attention to the unsanitary conditions of big cities. (BBC News -- UK)
So that's what Dickens went through week after week Sep 2, 2007
Then the BBC started to screen the Andrew Davies adaptation of Bleak House. It made me think about what it would be like to write, as Dickens had, a serial novel. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Generation Hex Jul 28, 2007
(Indeed, in all of Dickens, there is only one character whose name appears to be constructed by a heavy hand, and that is Honoria Dedlock, in "Bleak House." She would fit right into the Rowling universe. . (Wall Street Journal)
The great escape - part 2 Jun 23, 2007
I had the notion of rereading Bleak House, but couldn't find it amid the clutter in my study and was determined not to buy a duplicate copy. Instead, I decided it was time to tackle Tolstoy's War and Peace. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Great Expectations For Dickens Theme Park May 26, 2007
Will theme park be a Bleak House. The designers have re-created Victorian Britain with startling reality. (Sky News)
Nine to five Apr 21, 2007
Work brings Esther to Bleak House and sends Humbert Humbert to the house on Lawn Street. Work defines the plot and central moral conceit of Ian McEwan's Saturday. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
High times aboard the sewer boat ride to the slums Apr 20, 2007
As a former secretary of the Dickens Fellowship, a global collective of genial fanatics who meet each year to enthuse about Polly Toodle (Dombey and Son), Mr Turveydrop (Bleak House) and the rest, she has acted as a consultant to the project and has insisted at every stage, she says, on absolute authenticity. Exercising her yesterday was a graveyard close to the end of the boat ride, which she had heard included a headstone bearing the name Daryll. (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
What the Dickens? Apr 18, 2007
Opening in Kent at the end of next month, it's a day out for the family that brings to life the 15 novels by Charles Dickens; actually make that 13 - they haven't managed to squeeze in Barnaby Rudge or Bleak House ... Amazon reported that orders for Dickens' books shot up by 160% last year, thanks largely to the BBC serialisation of Bleak House, which was sold to 24 different countries. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Buxton Festival 2007 Programme Apr 8, 2007
Andrew Davies will be talking about his successful career adapting classic novels for the TV and movie screens, including Charles Dickens Bleak House, Moll Flanders, Tipping the Velvet and of course his several 'sexy' Jane Austen adaptations such as Northanger Abbey, Emma and Sense and Sensibility. Claire Tomalin will be talking about her acclaimed recent biography of Thomas Hardy. (Suite101.com)
Books you can't live without: the top 100 Mar 1, 2007
23 Bleak House Charles Dickens. 24 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Le Misrable by Victor Hugo? No thanks ... Feb 28, 2007
Soon after come Bleak House, North and South, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, The Count of Monte Cristo and The Portrait of a Lady, similarly straitjacketed ... The rambling David Copperfield is ripe for cutting, but Bleak House, in which Dickens was consciously widening his scope as an artist, is not. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
LOWRY/The Libby travesty Feb 1, 2007
The perjury trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby is not exactly Jarndyce and Jarndyce, the case in the Charles Dickens novel "Bleak House," which ruined everyone who came near it and dragged on for so long that people forgot what it originally had been about. But it could ruin Libby's life and Patrick Fitzgerald's reputation, and it already feels like a kind of relic. (Philadelphia Neshoba Democrat, MS)
The Ecstasy of Influence Jan 31, 2007
As examples accumulate Igor Stravinsky's music and Daniel Johnston's, Francis Bacon's paintings and Henry Darger's, the novels of the Oulipo group and of Hannah Crafts (the author who pillaged Dickens's Bleak House to write The Bondwoman's Narrative), as well as cherished texts that become troubling to their admirers after the discovery of their plagiarized elements, like Richard Condon's novels or Martin Luther King Jr.'s sermons it becomes apparent that appropriation, mimicry, quotation,... (Harper's Magazine)
Hillary Clinton Jan 23, 2007
Mrs. Jellyby, you may recall, is the Dickens character in Bleak House who is as intent on improving humanity as she is cavalier toward actual human beings; thus she heartlessly neglects her own family while high-mindedly pursuing charity abroad telescopic philanthropy, in Dickens classic phrase. Mrs. Jellyby is a pretty, diminutive woman in her forties with handsome eyes, Dickens writes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. (New Yorker)
PGA Nominations a Dream Come True for Dreamgirls Jan 4, 2007
Rounding out the race: the Charles Dickens adaptation Bleak House and HBO's Mrs. Harris and Elizabeth I.. As previously announced, the late Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, My Name Is Earl, The Office and Weeds will vie for honors as Best Episodic TV Comedy. (E! Online)
