Dickens' 'Life of our Lord' republished for Easter
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from April 1987.
Brought to you by
The 68-page book, "The Life of Our Lord," includes a foreword by one of Dickens' great-great grandsons, the Rev. Michael Dickens Whinney. The book is illustrated with drawings by caricaturist Bob Hoare.
The hardback book will be issued in Britain on Thursday by Ashford Press at a price of 9.95 pounds (16.10 dollars). Publishing rights have not been sold to other countries. Dickens' novels about 19th-century England, with its social injustice and hard times, continue to be reprinted and transformed into films and stage plays. These works include "Oliver Twist" and "Nicholas Nickleby." "He believed Christianity needed to be lived out and not just talked about," wrote Whinney, the Anglican Bishop of Southwell in Nottinghamshire.
The novelist enjoyed nothing more than reading aloud to his 10 children, Whinney wrote. "So it was in 1849 that he wrote this single short account of the life of Christ for his family. The original manuscript showed how often he had read it to them."
The story condenses the biblical version and adds explanations to help young children understand the events.
Dickens died in 1870 at age 58. His version of Christ's life was not published until 1934, after the last of his children had died. It set a record when the publishing rights sold for 40,000 pounds (then 180,000 dollars).
