Signature Programs

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Filtering by: “Charles Dickens”
Course | Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities with Edward G. Pettit  | Virtual
Oct
12
Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities, Virtual, Paid, Courses

Course | Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities with Edward G. Pettit  | Virtual

In this seminar, we’ll go beyond the best and worst of times and examine the wisdom/foolishness, belief/incredulity, Light/Darkness, hope/despair, etc. in a story that attempts to encapsulate a cataclysmic historical event, told by an author at the top of his abilities who had also just turned his life upside down with a series of personal decisions: abandonment of his wife; a young secret mistress; shuttering of his long-running magazine; start of a new magazine; and his first public reading tour. In effect, Dickens himself was leading a kind of small-r revolution against himself at the time he was writing about Revolution. 

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Behind the Bookcase Program | "What a Man is Hugo!" Victor Hugo and His Search for the Literary Divine | In-Person
May
15
Behind the Bookcase Tours, Public, Paid, In-Person, Victor Hugo, Flaubert, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare

Behind the Bookcase Program | "What a Man is Hugo!" Victor Hugo and His Search for the Literary Divine | In-Person

Few writers of the 19th century fused literature, religion, and politics quite as poetically as Victor Hugo. Join us to look at the Rosenbach's Hugo collection and related literary forces including Shakespeare, Dickens, and Flaubert. 

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[SOLD OUT, RECORDING ONLY AVAILABLE] Course | Reading Dickens’s Oliver Twist with Edward G Pettit | Virtual
Nov
3
Courses, Charles Dickens, Dickens, Paid, Virtual, Oliver Twist, Public

[SOLD OUT, RECORDING ONLY AVAILABLE] Course | Reading Dickens’s Oliver Twist with Edward G Pettit | Virtual

“Oliver Twist has asked for more!” Edward G. Pettit will lead a seminar on one of Charles Dickens’s most popular novels. Oliver is the first child protagonist of any novel, and Dickens recounts Oliver’s adventures from a Poor Workhouse to a dangerous den of London criminals.

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Behind the Bookcase Tour | Sleuths and Spies | In-Person
Sep
12
Behind the Bookcase Tours, In-Person, Paid, Public, Charles Dickens

Behind the Bookcase Tour | Sleuths and Spies | In-Person

The game is afoot! Investigate the realm of detective and spy literature in this Behind the Bookcase tour. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to discover connections between famous fictional mysteries and the lives—and legacies—of real-world spies. Explore early mystery stories including Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, examine an original cypher belonging to a female socialite and Civil War spy, and exercise your sleuthing skills to detect a forgery in the Rosenbach’s collection. 

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Course | Reading The Mystery of Edwin Drood serially with Edward G. Pettit | Virtual
Apr
28
Courses, Paid, Public, Virtual, Charles Dickens

Course | Reading The Mystery of Edwin Drood serially with Edward G. Pettit | Virtual

The Rosenbach holds in its collection the original serial parts of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  Throughout this course, we’ll read the existing six serial parts as the first readers did, one part at a time for six sessions, then we’ll spend a final session discussing the many ways Dickens could have unspooled his final mystery, perhaps even solving the mystery of Edwin Drood itself.    

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