Author's effect on literature still being felt today

LONDON - Charles Dickens will be feted around the world next year in literature, film, theater, music and art, underlining his effect on international culture two hundred years after his birth.

The author of classics such as Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Bleak House and A Tale of Two Cities is considered as one of the greatest English language novelists.

His books, which are still in print, see sales of hundreds of millions of copies. During his lifetime, his works were turned into theater.

With the advent of cinema in the late 19th century and television decades after, Dickens became the most adapted novelist of all time, with more than 100 films made in the silent era alone. "The prose style of Dickens is a foreshadowing of cinematic technique," said Michael Eaton, co-curator of Dickens on Screen.

It will be held at the British Film Institute (BFI) in London from January to March 2012.

Movie adaptations will also be screened next year in the United States, Germany, the Philippines and China thanks to the state-funded cultural agency the British Council.

"When we think of all Dickens's extraordinary characters and nail-biting cliffhangers, it is not surprising he's the most adapted author of all time," said Heather Stewart, the BFI's creative director.

Tapping its own archive, the BFI will screen a rarely seen silent work from 1901 called Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost and David Copperfield from 1913.

At the program's center will be David Lean's Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), considered by many to be the greatest film versions of Dickens, as well as Carol Reed's popular musical Oliver! (1968).

Five major television adaptations will be screened in their entirety, while director Mike Newell is making a film based on Great Expectations, which will possibly be released next year.

"Dickens was my first adult author, and he was very much my way into literature," said best-selling novelist David Nicholls, who wrote the screenplay for the new version.

"I certainly wouldn't be a writer if it hadn't been for Dickens."

Exhibitions dedicated to the Victorian author have already begun opening in Britain, with many more planned in the run-up to the bicentenary of his birth on Feb 7, 2012.

The Victoria and Albert Museum launched its display this week featuring the original manuscript of David Copperfield.

The British Library is advertising A Hankering after Ghosts: Charles Dickens and the Supernatural which opens on Nov 29, while on Dec 9, the Museum of London opens Dickens and London.

Overseas shows include one at the Museum Strauhof in Zurich, which is due to open in December, and another at the Chateau D'Hardelot in northern France, which was visited by the author many times.

Reuters

(China Daily 11/19/2011 page6)