Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens

Today marks the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens. What's your favorite Dickens book or character? Mine is The Tale of Two Cities. I also love the musical, "Oliver!"based on Dickens's Oliver Twist. I especially like the version starring Ron Moody as Fagin. But truth be told, the movie-version "Fagin" was much more lovable than the one in Dickens's book.

In keeping with the occasion, Publishers Weekly reports that Oxford University has great expectations for their recent release, Selected Letters of Charles Dickens. It's "a virtual autobiography of a man whose epistolary output rivaled his fictional output."