By Alan Hustak on December 16, 2011
In the spring of 1842 Charles Dickens took a steamboat from Kingston, Ont. and sailed down the St. Lawrence intoMontreal with his wife, Catherine, and found the town “full of life and bustle.” Dickens was 30 and had already written six books, including Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. No other novelist has had such a spectacular success. Two hundred years after he was born in 1812, Dickens remains as immortal as Shakespeare. It is probably fair to say more people know of Oliver Twist, the artful dodger, Syndey Carton, Miss Havisham, Micawber, Scrooge and Tiny Tim from the endless television mini-series, movies and Broadway musicals based on his novels than they do from reading his books.
