Charles Dickens 200th Anniversary Collection Vol. 1

The Charles Dickens 200th Anniversary Collection comprises short works previously unrecorded for LibriVox – fiction, essays, poetry, letters, magazine articles and speeches – and each volume will be a potpourri of all genres and periods of his writing. This first volume was released on Dickens’ 200th birthday, February 7th 2012 and further volumes followed during the anniversary year. Volume 1 includes short stories including, amongst others, The Holly Tree, the first part of Holiday Romance and three pieces from Mugby Junction. Some items requiring a little further explanation are Prince Bull, written as a fairy tale, but in reality a scathing attack on the Government’s handling of supplies to the troops in the Crimean War; Old Lamps for New Ones in which Dickens makes clear his low opinion of the ethos of the Pre-Raphaelite school of painting; and Frauds on the Fairies, a polemic against George Cruikshank’s bowdlerisation of fairy tales for moralistic purposes, and the interesting revelation that ‘product placement’ is by no means a new phenomenon. (Introduction by Ruth Golding)