Adelphi, December 1848. The Haunted Man / Mark Lemon - New Strand Theatre, June 1837 -- Nicholas Nickleby / Edward Stirling - Adelphi, November 1838 -- Barnaby Rudge / Edward Stirling - New Strand Theatre, August 1841 -- Old Scrooge / Charles Webb - Sadler's Wells and New Strand Theatre, February 1844 -- Martin Chuzzlewit / Edward Stirling - Lyceum, July 1844 -- The Chimes / Gilbert Abbot A'Beckett and Mark Lemon - Adelphi, December 1844 -- The Cricket on the Hearth / Albert Smith - Lyceum, December 1845 -- The Battle of Life / Albert Smith - Lyceum, December 1846 -- The Haunted Man / Mark Lemon - Adelphi, December 1848. Volume II : Jingle / James Albery - (Jingle Lyceum Theatre, April 1887). Dot / Dion Boucicault - (Adelphi Theatre, April 1862, New York, 1859) -- No Thoroughfare / Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens - (Adelphi Theatre, December 1867) -- Bardell v. Pickwick / John Hollingshead - (Gaiety Theatre, January 1871) -- Great Expectations / W. S. Gilbert - (Court Theatre, May 1871) -- Jo, or Bleak House / J. P. Burnett - (Globe Theatre, February 1876, Liverpool, 1875) -- Jingle / James Albery - (Jingle Lyceum Theatre, April 1887).
Summary:
Dickens loved the stage--he enjoyed thousands of evenings in the theatre, and longed to write for it and to perform himself, an ambition that he eventually satisfied by touring alone with his Readings. Victorian prejudice and his need to preserve his personal image kept him from openly becoming a stage professional earlier in his career, but all his work was informed by his dramatic imagination. He found ways of circumventing these taboos by seeking closer and closer contact over the staging of his work with dramatic writers, admired actors, and trusted theatre managements. This book presents, for the first time, fully edited texts of some of the plays which these tacit collaborations produced: dramatizations of Dickens's early novels (from The Pickwick Papers to Barnaby Rudge) and, especially, his Christmas books, which appeared almost annually between 1843 and 1848. Each of these, from A Christmas Carol onwards, was staged in London's new West End theatres simultaneously with the book publication. Dickens sent proof sheets to his friends to 'dramatize' work that was increasingly already conceived for the stage, and for the acting of his friends Bob and Mary Ann Keeley. This selection of the plays created in this way, some previously unpublished, offers the first opportunity for modern scholars to consider not only an exciting body of translations to the stage made by the first generation of Dickensian adaptors, but also the influence of their work and of the performances they enabled upon Dickens himself.-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.