Rediscovering Dickens

A chronicle of the transcription of 20 issues of Household Words by Charles Dickens. http://household.umkc.edu

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Location: Kansas City, Missouri, United States

I'm working on a pet project to digitize all of the issues of Charles Dickens's weekly magazine, Household Words, that contained portions of his novel Hard Times. Since OCR software is expensive, I'm transcribing all of 20 issues by hand. Since I am actually interested in what I am typing (and am therefore reading as I go), and I not the speediest of typists, this will take me a little while. This blog will chronicle my progress and my thoughts about the project and its content along the way. Why should you care? If you are at all interested in how popular culture evolves, how the middle class came to be, and how literature is affected within and without its context, you should read on. If you couldn't care less of such things, then you might want to go elsewhere. Thanks for visiting - I hope you will return. - Lynn

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

It has occurred to me that I may not be making myself very clear when I refer to Dickens as the author of all of these articles. Dickens did not - I repeat did not - write all or even most of these articles. There were many journalists and authors contributing to Household Words. However, Dickens did have a huge influence on what went into the magazine, and often edited (sometimes heavily) the articles prior to publication. Therefore, when I refer to my literary conversation with Dickens, I am using Dickens as a composite of all the contributers to his magazine. It's far easier to criticize one person than a full cast of Victorian characters.

I will try to mention the actual author of the articles when I can remember to do so.

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