The Life of Our Lord is a book about the life of Jesus of Nazareth written by English novelist Charles Dickens, for his young children, between 1846 and 1849, at about the time that he was writing David Copperfield . The Life of Our Lord was published in 1934, 64 years after Dickens's death. [1]
Dickens wrote The Life of Our Lord exclusively for his children, to whom he read it aloud every Christmas. He strictly forbade publication of The Life during his own lifetime and begged his sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth, to make sure that the Dickens family "would never even hand the manuscript, or a copy of it, to anyone to take out of the house." [2] His handwritten manuscript was passed down to Georgina Hogarth after Dickens's death in 1870. [3] On her death in 1917, it came into the possession of Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, Dickens's last surviving son. [4] The Dickens family continued to read it at every Christmas and, at the author's request, delayed publication until the last of Dickens's children had died. [3]
The book begins:
My Dear Children, I am very anxious that you should know something about the History of Jesus Christ. For everybody ought to know about Him. No one ever lived who was so good, so kind, so gentle, and so sorry for all people who did wrong, or were in any way ill or miserable, as He was. [1]
There then follows a simple account of Jesus's life and teachings, with an occasional touch of Dickens's humour:
You never saw a locust, because they belong to that country near Jerusalem, which is a great way off. So do camels, but I think you have seen a camel. At all events, they are brought over here, sometimes; and if you would like to see one, I will show you one.
On the death of Sir Henry Fielding Dickens in 1933, his will provided that, if the majority of his family were in favour of publication, The Life of Our Lord should be given to the world. By majority vote, Sir Henry's widow and children decided to publish the book in London. [3] Through Curtis Brown Ltd., London literary agents, Lady Dickens sold world publication rights for The Life of Our Lord to the Daily Mail for $210,000. The first serial rights for North and South America went to United Feature Syndicate Inc., whose general manager Monte Bourjaily outbid King Features Syndicate, Bell Syndicate, NANA, and NEA. [4] United Features promptly resold The Life of Our Lord to a sufficient number of United States newspapers to avoid giving first publication to a magazine. [4] It was first published, in serial form, in March 1934. In 1934, Simon & Schuster published the first American edition, which became the year's tenth best-selling non-fiction book. [5] In the United Kingdom it was published by Associated Newspapers Ltd, also in 1934.
Dickens's original manuscript was purchased by a group of private collectors and in 1964 was presented to the Free Library of Philadelphia, which has held it ever since. [1]
To Begin With, an adaptation of The Life of Our Lord by the American playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, was performed by the author's great-great-grandson Gerald Charles Dickens in 2015 at the Music Box Theatre in Minneapolis. [6] [7] [8] The play was revived in 2017.
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.
William Hogarth was an English painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, social critic, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects", and he is perhaps best known for his series A Harlot's Progress, A Rake's Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode. Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian".
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1864.
In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise...
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1846.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1824.
John Forster was a Victorian English biographer and literary critic.
Charles Culliford Boz Dickens, better known as Charles Dickens Jr., was the first child of the English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine. A failed businessman, he became the editor of his father's magazine All the Year Round, and a writer of dictionaries. He is now most remembered for his two 1879 books, Dickens's Dictionary of London and Dickens's Dictionary of the Thames.
Montagu Christie Butler was a British academic, librarian, lexicographer, musician, and Esperantist. A winner of several prizes at the Royal Academy of Music in London, he was a harpist and a versatile music teacher skilled in playing various musical instruments, as well as a teacher of voice and of musical composition.
Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, KC was an English barrister, who served as a KC and Common Serjeant of London. He was the eighth of ten children born to English author Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine, and the last surviving child of Dickens.
Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens was an English lecturer. The sixth child and fourth son of English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine, Dickens made lecture tours in Australia, Europe, and the United States on his father's life and work.
Georgina Hogarth was the sister-in-law, housekeeper, and adviser of English novelist Charles Dickens and the editor of three volumes of his collected letters after his death.
Catherine Thomson "Kate" Dickens was the wife of English novelist Charles Dickens, the mother of his ten children, and a writer of domestic management.
Mary "Mamie" Dickens was the eldest daughter of the English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine. She wrote a book of reminiscences about her father, and in conjunction with her aunt, Georgina Hogarth, she edited the first collection of his letters.
Jack Sheppard is a novel by William Harrison Ainsworth serially published in Bentley's Miscellany from 1839 to 1840, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. It is a historical romance and a Newgate novel based on the real life of the 18th-century criminal Jack Sheppard.
Dickens of London is a 1976 television miniseries from Yorkshire Television based on the life of English novelist Charles Dickens. Both Dickens and his father John were played by British actor Roy Dotrice. The series was written by Wolf Mankowitz and Marc Miller. In the United States, the series was shown in 1977.
George Hogarth WS was a Scottish lawyer, newspaper editor, music critic, and musicologist. He authored several books on opera and Victorian musical life in addition to contributing articles to various publications.
Old Mortlake Burial Ground, also known as Old Mortlake Cemetery, is a cemetery in Mortlake in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, at Avenue Gardens, London SW14 8BP. Established in 1854, and enlarged in 1877, it is now managed by Richmond upon Thames Borough Council.
Mary Scott Hogarth was the sister of Catherine Dickens and the sister-in-law of Charles Dickens. Hogarth first met Charles Dickens at age 14, and after Dickens married Hogarth's sister Catherine, Mary lived with the couple for a year. Hogarth died suddenly in 1837, which caused Dickens to miss the publication dates for two novels: The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist. Hogarth later became the inspiration for a number of characters in Dickens novels, including Rose Maylie in Oliver Twist and Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop. Charles and Catherine Dickens' first daughter was named Mary in her memory.
The letters of Charles Dickens, of which more than 14,000 are known, range in date from about 1821, when Dickens was 9 years old, to 8 June 1870, the day before he died. They have been described as "invariably idiosyncratic, exuberant, vivid, and amusing…widely recognized as a significant body of work in themselves, part of the Dickens canon". They were written to family, friends, and the contributors to his literary periodicals, who included many of the leading writers of the day. Their letters to him were almost all burned by Dickens because of his horror at the thought of his private correspondence being laid open to public scrutiny. The reference edition of Dickens's letters is the 12-volume Pilgrim Edition, edited by Graham Storey et al. and published by Oxford University Press.
The Gospel in Brief is a 1902 synthesis of the four gospels of the New Testament into one narrative of the life of Jesus by Russian author Leo Tolstoy.
