Inimitable: Uncovering Charles Dickens New Podcasts
Dickens Museum
The new Charles Dickens podcasts about A Christmas Carol
If an annual reading of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is part of your festive tradition, the Charles Dickens Museum's first set of podcasts will be of interest.
Under the title Inimitable, the first series takes a look at the key themes and the publishing history of Dickens's bestseller through six half hour episodes. The main speakers are Dr Cindy Sughrue (Director of the Charles Dickens Museum), Dr Frankie Kubicki (deputy director), and Emma Harper (curator). Guest speakers include Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, Dr Lee Jackson, Pen Vogler, Simon Callow and Miriam Margolyes. The episodes can be heard on Spotify:
- Episode One looks at what attracted Dickens to writing about the the festive season and the impact of his novella on Victorian audiences
- Episode Two examines the social context of A Christmas Carol especially poverty in London in the 1840s and how it shaped Dickens's writing
- Episode Three focuses the physical book of A Christmas Carol and how it was made and designed
- Episode Four concentrates on Ignorance and Want, the two children presented by The Ghost of Christmas Present
- Episode Five is called Striking a Blow and explores Dickens's politics and how this fits into the novella
- Episode Six concludes the series, looking at how Dickens used food in his fiction, why it was so important to him, and what his descriptions tell us about Dickens himself (as well as his influence on eating turkey at Christmas)
