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Dickens' best? It's Bleak, apparently.
Published: 2/9/2012 12:53 PM
Last Modified: 2/9/2012 12:53 PM


Charles Dickens.

As Tuesday was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, the magazine The Economist decided to figure out which of Dickens' novels sold the most copies during his lifetime.

In a post on its "Graphic Detail" blog, the writers say they obtained their figures from a 1978 book "Charles Dickens and his Publishers," by Robert Patten." But the results, they continue, might be less trustworthy than most, given "the vagaries of Victorian record-keeping."

Maybe the biggest surprise is the novel most people today associate with Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol," ranks so low (14th out of 16 titles),followed by the book that most schoolchildren encounter at some point in their education, "Great Expectations."

Number one is "Bleak House," possibly Dickens' longest novel and certainly one of his darkest. It's also considered perhaps his greatest novel, with its mix of third- and first-person narration, its huge yet deftly managed cast of characters, its wide-ranging and suspenseful plot, and its expose of the myriad problems of the Victorian legal system.

And it does what the best of Dickens always does -- immerses the reader so completely in the world he has created, so that, as Vladimir Nabokov said of "Bleak House," one can "bask in Dickens."


Reader Comments 1 Total
223862 (last year)
I read the Dickens item about Bleakhouse being his most popular book with great interest because I had just returned from a day spent at Bleakhouse Farm in Wagoner County. In 1887 my great grandparents came to Indian Territory from Georgia to claim their Cherokee headright acreage. My great grandmother, Mary Shaw Cleland, named her new home Bleakhouse; Dickens was her favorite author and Bleakhouse her favorite of his books. The house and acreage are intact and the latest family living there was 6th generation.
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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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