The Posthumous Dickens:

Commemorative Adaptations, 1870-2012

Abstract

This article investigates three pivotal moments in Dickens’s posthumous fame – 1870, 1912, 2012 – to consider how Dickens’s post-1870 reputation has been forged by stage, screen, and television commemorations. The stage adaptations produced in the years following Dickens’s death emphasised the fatherly characters of Dickens’s novels, as well as his own paternal traits. Silent film adaptations produced during the Dickens centenary celebrations focused on the youthful elements of Dickens or emphasised his national identity in films that functioned as virtual literary tourism. Bicentennial adaptations, meanwhile, have meditated on the secrets and anxieties inherent in Dickens’s life and work, thereby seeking to normalise the apprehensions of our own cultural moment. This essay concludes that, while each generation has constructed its own version of ‘The Other Dickens’ to meet the specific cultural values and concerns of its age, this bicentenary period has been notable for its interest in the flawed or ‘Fallen Dickens’.