Are you tired of spoiled celebrities and nouveau riche wannabes behaving badly in the news? Yes, I know they’d fit right in with the Regency, but I’ve had enough. I can find better things to do online and I have just discovered some major timesucks that I hope you’ll enjoy too.
First, since we’re heading for Christmas, here’s a fabulous opportunity to take a look at Dickens’ editing process and enter a contest. The original manuscript of A Christmas Carol, owned by the Morgan Library and Museum, usually has one page at a time on display, but has entered into an agreement with the New York Times to photograph and display the entire manuscript, side by side with the final version, so you can compare the two.
City Blog is sponsoring a contest for readers to choose what they think is the most interesting edit and the winner will be invited to tea at the Morgan with blogger Alison Leigh Cowan (but you’ll have to get yourself up to NYC!). You can see the manuscript here.
Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in six weeks in 1843. He needed the cash, with six children and an expensive lifestyle to maintain, and his current serialized novel Martin Chuzzlewit was not selling well. The first printing of six thousand copies sold out, but Dickens made no money on it, having decided to splurge on hand-colored drawings by John Leech, a well-known illustrator.
If you’re planning a trip to the Morgan, there’s an exhibit A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy now through March 14, 2010 which includes manuscripts, personal letters, and related materials.
And back to Dickens–if you care to splurge on a Christmas present to yourself Sothebys is auctioning off a complete set of his Christmas books in original cloth bindings. I’ll be blogging tomorrow at History Hoydens about auctions of writers’ manuscripts and possessions, so I hope you’ll come on over and say hello.
Has anyone seen the Austen exhibit yet or visited any other museum recently? Tell us what you’ve seen! I’m planning to go to Written in Bone at the Natural History Museum in Washington DC this weekend. I visited the exhibit very briefly last summer but want to go back and linger over the bones.
I hadn’t heard about the Dickens exhibit. It sounds fascinating. I had heart about the Austen one.
Both make me wish I were closer to NY.
I am definitely going to the Austen exhibit–maybe when Amanda is in town? Maybe before? Maybe both?
Anyway. Thanks for sharing the details about Dickens and Austen.
(And I wish Carolyn were closer, too!)
Megan, give us a full report about it! I’m wondering when I could get up to NY for it.
We are going to DC the end of January, and Written In Bone is on my list. We are taking our 11 year old grandson who has never been to DC. We lived there for 5 years and can’t wait to get back to take him to all the wonderful places up there. Not the best time of the year, but it is when we can go.
Forgot, heard about the Austen exhibit at the Morgan and was hoping it would go on tour. sadly it is an in- house exhibit. We can’t get to the City any time soon. Too bad, there are a lot of great museums there I’d like to see.
Maybe I’ll get to the Bone exhibit! I think I saw some of it in Jamestown, though.
I would LOVE to go to NYC to the Morgan Library! Wish I could swing it.