Dickens on Screen: (On Screen)

Television and film, not libraries or scholarship, have made Charles Dickens the most important unread novelist in English. It is not merely that millions of people feel comfortable deploying the word 'Dickensian' to describe their own and others' lives, but that many more people who have never read Dickens know what Dickensian means. They know about Dickens because they have access to over a century of adaptations for the big and small screen. Because Dickens has proven to be the most easily adapted of major novelists, he has become, somewhat ironically, one of the foremost novelists in the English canon. This is ironic because it was just this capacity to entertain that once confined him to the margins of the 'great tradition' in fiction. Dickens on Screen is an invaluable resource for students and scholars alike. It provides an exhaustive filmography and is well illustrated.

Table of Contents:
List of illustrations; Notes on the contributors; Acknowledgments; Introduction John Glavin; Part I: 1. Dickens, psychoanalysis and film: a roundtable Gerhard Joseph; Part II: 2. David Copperfield's home movies John Bowen; 3. David Lean's Great Expectations Regina Barreca; 4. Great Expectations on Australian television John O. Jordan; 5. Dickens 'The Signalman' and Rubini's La Stazione Alessandro Vescovi; 6. Bill Murray's Christmas Carols Murray Baumgarten; 7. Screen memories in Dickens and Woody Allen Robert M. Polhemus; Part III: 8. Writing after Dickens: the television writer's art John Romano; 9. Directing Dickens: Alfonso Cuaron's 1998 Pam Katz; 10. Playing Dickens: an interview with Miriam Margolyes; Part IV: 11. Cinematic Dickens and uncinematic words Kamilla Elliott; 12. Dickens, Eisenstein, film Garrett Stewart; 13. Orson Welles and Charles Dickens 1938–41 Marguerite Rippy; 14. David Copperfield (1935) and the US curriculum Steve J. Wurzler; 15. Dickens, Selznick, and Southpark Jeffrey Sconce; 16. Tiny Tim on screen: a disabilities perspective Martin F. Norden; Part V: Dickens composed: film and television adaptation 1897–2001 Kate Charnell Watt and Kate Lonsdale; Index.

About the Author :
John Glavin is Professor of English, and Director of the John Carroll Scholars Program Georgetown University in Washington DC. He is the author of After Dickens: Reading, Adaptation and Performance (Cambridge 1999).

Review :
"Raises a number of issues that are pertinent to the many debates that center around the translation of nineteenth-century fiction into film more generally..." Kate Flint, Studies in English Literature "For such a reader, this book offers a fresh and, at times, irreverent perspective on the complex interactions between film and literature...Glavin's collection lays a strong foundation upon which to build." Dickens Quarterly, Cara Lane, University of Washington