Plot
A fictionalized account of the young life of Hans Christian Andersen, a young man with a penchant for storytelling but struggles to find his place in the world and gain the affection of the woman he adores. Interspersed throughout are brief interludes of the stories that will make Hans famous (The Nightingale, The Little Mermaid and The Snow Queen to name a few), which are intertwined with the events that surround his own life.
Keywords: animal, based-on-autobiography, character-name-in-title, charles-dickens, chinese, chinoiserie, copenhagen-denmark, dancing, empire-fashion, fairy-tale
Plot
The film begins with a live-action sequence set in Boston in 1857, the site of a live reading by renowned novelist Dickens. As he begins his 'story of ghosts' a woman in the audience screams because she has seen a mouse and Dickens points out that this is appropriate since his story begins with a mouse. At this point the story turns into the animated version and Dickens explains that the mouse, named Gabriel, carries a glimmer of hope amidst the glaring co-existence of rich and poor in the streets of London. Throughout the subsequent unfolding of the well-known story Gabriel acts as a miniature Greek chorus, providing younger members of the audience with a point of entry into the story and, in the case of the potentially frightening elements (the Ghosts of Past, Present and Future), a place of refuge.
Keywords: 1840s, based-on-novel, christmas, compassion, ghost, holiday, punctuation-in-title, redemption, victorian-era
Ebenezer Scrooge: Cratchit, that slovenly, good for nothing... Even a tiny mouse is more tidy!
Mrs. Cratchit: [about Scrooge] He threw a bucket of freezing water on our Tim, that's what he did! No wonder the poor child's pneumonia is back.
Ebenezer Scrooge: Merry Christmas to you, Mr. Snowman!
Bob Cratchit: [spotting two mice on Scrooge's shoulder] Mr. Scrooge, sir, there's two mice.::Ebenezer Scrooge: Never mind the mice, they were here on time.
Charles Dickens: That, ladies and gentlemen is the story of A Christmas Carol. Not quite the same one I wrote in the book, I admit. I hope you enjoyed it, none the less.
Bob Cratchit: I'll make it up to you, Sir!::Ebenezer Scrooge: No, Mr Cratchit! I'll make it up to you!
From top to bottom ... it's the best place in town !
Hard Times - For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book appraises English society and is aimed at highlighting the social and economic pressures of the times.
Hard Times is unusual in several respects. It is by far the shortest of Dickens' novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written before and after it. Also, unlike all but one of his other novels, Hard Times has neither a preface, nor illustrations. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town, in some ways similar to Manchester, though smaller. Coketown may be partially based upon 19th-century Preston.
One of Dickens' reasons for writing Hard Times was that sales of his weekly periodical, Household Words, were low, and it was hoped its publication in instalments would boost circulation, as indeed proved to be the case. Since publication it has received a mixed response from critics, such as F.R. Leavis, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Macaulay, mainly focusing on Dickens's treatment of trade unions and his post-Industrial Revolution pessimism regarding the divide between Capitalist mill owners and undervalued workers during the Victorian era.
A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature.
The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. It follows the lives of several protagonists through these events. The most notable are Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton. Darnay is a French once-aristocrat who falls victim to the indiscriminate wrath of the revolution despite his virtuous nature, and Carton is a dissipated British barrister who endeavours to redeem his ill-spent life out of his unrequited love for Darnay's wife. The 45-chapter novel was published in 31 weekly installments in Dickens' new literary periodical titled All the Year Round. From April 1859 to November 1859, Dickens also republished the chapters as eight monthly sections in green covers. Dickens' previous novels had appeared only as monthly installments. The first weekly installment of A Tale of Two Cities ran in the first issue of All the Year Round on 30 April 1859. The last ran thirty weeks later, on 26 November.
Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It depicts the growth and personal development of an orphan named Pip. The novel was first published in serial form in Dickens' weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861.
On Christmas Eve, around 1812, Pip, an orphan of about seven, encounters an escaped convict in the village churchyard while visiting his mother's, father's and siblings' graves. The convict scares Pip into stealing food for him, and a file to grind away his shackles, from the home he shares with his abusive older sister and her kind, passive husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith. The next day, soldiers recapture two convicts engaged in a fight and return them to the prison ship.
Miss Havisham, a wealthy spinster, who wears an old wedding dress and lives in the dilapidated Satis House, asks Pip's Uncle Pumblechook to find a boy to play with her adopted daughter Estella. Pip begins to visit Miss Havisham and Estella, with whom he falls in love.
As a young apprentice at Joe Gargery's forge, Pip is approached by a lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, who tells him he is to receive a large sum of money from an anonymous benefactor and must leave for London immediately where he is to become a gentleman. Pip believes Miss Havisham to be his benefactress and visits her and Estella, who has returned from studying on the Continent.
Charles John Huffam Dickens ( /ˈtʃɑrlz ˈdɪkɪnz/; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic who is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period and the creator of some of the world's most memorable fictional characters. During his lifetime Dickens' works enjoyed unprecedented popularity and fame, but it was in the twentieth century that his literary genius was fully recognized by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to enjoy an enduring popularity among the general reading public.
Born in Portsmouth, England, Dickens left school to work in a factory after his father was thrown into debtors' prison. Though he had little formal education, his early impoverishment drove him to succeed. He edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels and hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (also known as The Pickwick Papers) is the first novel by Charles Dickens. After the publication, the widow of the illustrator Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any specific input, writing that "Mr Seymour never originated or suggested an incident, a phrase, or a word, to be found in the book."
Dickens was asked to contribute to the project as an up and coming writer following the success of Sketches by Boz, published in 1836 (most of Dickens' novels were issued in shilling instalments before being published in the complete volume). Dickens (still writing under the pseudonym of Boz) increasingly took over the unsuccessful monthly publication after Seymour had committed suicide.
With the introduction of Sam Weller in chapter 10, the book became the first real publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books, and other merchandise.
I lived a happy life ‘til I was ten years old
When debt landed dad in prison and our country house
was sold
Lunched with a lady in her London flat so cold
Worked at a good polish factory, labelling jars quite
Donald told
Goodness only knows
I was a miserable soul
For a time I went to school but then I found a job
As a clerk to a lawyer, oh it made my poor head throb
I failed to be an actor, despite my loud gob
Ended up reporting speeches of the parliamentary mob
Then as everybody knows
I started writing pros
Put my life into my books
Friends and enemies and crooks
Legal bosses of the crop
In “The Old Curiosity Shop”
Fagin in “Oliver Twist”
A factory pal, you get the gist
And although my memory’s quite foggy
Got Scrooge from the grave of Ebenezer Scroggy
My first book was an overnight sensation
But I drove myself too hard to enjoy the agilation
Despite my wealth, my family begged for money
I wrote of it in “Chuzzlewit” which people said was
funny
Didn’t sell like books before
My family still asked for more
“Little Dorrit” is a tale
About my dad in debtor’s jail
While “Hard Times” tells my life ‘bout
When I tried to leave my wife
“Little Nell’s” here was my poor dear
Departed sister-in-law
And “David Copperfield”, working in a factory
I must confess that that was really me
In my life, felt shamed ‘bout poverty in childhood
Wrote about sadness, suffering and fears
Also wrote about people with funny names
Bumble, Smallweed, Scrooge, Uriah Heep
And Wackford Squeers
Whilst writing “Edwin Drood”
Train crashed in, helped my mood
Still I drove myself on
With readings far across the pond
Died before I wrote Drood’s end
Something drove me ‘round the bend
So Dickens, take a dickens, take a bow
And Heaven knows
Imagination runs wild
You turn to pages
Blank and white
Stain them with ink
Seeping through
(Read for me) Read for
(Read for me) Read for me
Bold, and always aware
Underlining the italic horizon
Painting pictures
With words
(Read for me) Read for
(Read for me) Read for me
Your imagination is our food
Our will to read on
Will Intrigue us
(and suck us in)
We are your children
Recreate and animate
Lost times
The past (the past)
The future (the future)
(Read for me) Read for
(Read for me) Read for me
As we wait
In the dark
Seeking light
This is your world
And We read
On and on and on
As we read
In the dark
Seeking light
Images painted in black
Seeping through
As you are