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Thread: Dickens' meeting with Dostoevsky

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    Registered User kev67's Avatar
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    Dickens' meeting with Dostoevsky

    I was disappointed to read that the meeting between Dickens and Dostoevsky never happened. They were supposed to have met in 1862 when Dostoevsky was in London, but it seems the article in which the meeting was first referred to was a fraud. Still, it led to quite an amusing article in the TLS.
    According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
    Charles Dickens, by George Orwell

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    That's a great article! I've been wondering why Dickens didn't meet more "famous Victorians". I recently performed a Google search to see if Dickens had met Marx and found nothing. Why didn't they meet - they were both in London. What about Darwin? There's a book called "Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin: The Two Who Never Met". What's up with that? You'd think they would both make every effort to meet!

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    Cool article! I love the fact that there's a book revolving about the two Charles's who never met - I wonder why it's important to us that famous people meet each other?!

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    Registered User kev67's Avatar
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    It was a great bit of detective work by Eric Naiman to uncover the author of the hoax article. I was amused that the hoaxer had previously written a little appreciated novel, which he exaggerated the importance of in literary journals under different pseudonyms. It looks like he even wrote a critique of his novel under another pseudonym. A D Harvey does not seem to have been a complete failure as an author. He has about a dozen books, still available from Amazon, on history, military history, biography, literary criticism and even a couple of novels. He sounds like a character out of New Grub Street, or perhaps a campus comedy by David Lodge.
    According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
    Charles Dickens, by George Orwell

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    Registered User kev67's Avatar
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    BBC Radio 4 are airing an abridged version of Claire Tomalin's biography of Dickens. Unfortunately, she included this meeting between Dickens and Dostoevsky, and it was repeated on the radio. It is a pity it is not true. It was a very nice story. Dickens admitted to Dostoevsky that he based his villains on the bad side of his nature, and his heroes on the good.

    I wondered myself which language they used. Dickens would not have spoken Russian. He may have spoken some French, but how fluently? Russian nobles appear to have been taught three of four languages, but next to Russian, they spoke French best. Dostoevsky was not a noble, but, looking at his Wikipedia page, his French was good enough to translate French novels.
    According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
    Charles Dickens, by George Orwell

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