The Annotated A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, Susanne Alleyn, c. 2014

 The Annotated A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, Susanne Alleyn, c. 2014.

The Mystery of Charles Dickens, A. N. Wilson, 2020.

The Mystery of Charles Dickens, A. N. Wilson, 2020. 

Chapter One: The Mystery of Fifteen Pounds, Thirteen Shillings, and Ninepence

£sd.  Decimalized February 15, 1971.

12 d = one schilling. (denarius = the one pence coin)

20 shilling = one pound.

Cashed a check for 22 pounds. Found six pounds, six shillings and three pence in his pocket on the day he collapsed (subsequently died). What happened to the other £15 s13 d?

Bill Sikes is one of literature's most terrifying villains. As a brutal burglar and murderer in Fagin's criminal gang in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, Sikes relies on brute force and intimidation. His character highlights the dark, corrupting realities of the Victorian criminal underworld. His dog, Bull's Eye.

Esther's Narrative, link here, Bleak House. One of two narratives, Bleak House. The other narrative is an unnamed third person omniscient.

Charles Dickens: loved to write about death.

Nell Trent, 1841, The Old Curiosity Shop. Little Nell. 

Jo, the crossing sweeper. Bleak House.

The tall lady eating sandwiches, The Pickwick Papers. 

Query:

I've barely started reading Charles Dickens, but with his fascination with death, he starts to remind me of another Englishman: Alfred Hitchcock. Thoughts?

Reply: 

You are absolutely spot on. Both of these Englishmen were masterful architects of suspense who viewed death not just as a finality, but as a lens to explore the psychological depths, anxieties, and moral failings of humanity.

 
The connection goes much deeper than their mutual fascination with the macabre. Consider these shared hallmarks of their storytelling:

• The Hunted Innocent: Just as Hitchcock routinely thrust ordinary people into nightmarish circumstances in thrillers like Saboteur or North by Northwest, Dickens frequently placed vulnerable protagonists—like Oliver Twist—in the crosshairs of sinister forces.
• The Criminal Mind: Both men loved to peer into the minds of the depraved. Hitchcock explored the twisted psychology of villains in films like Rope and Psycho, while Dickens heavily populated his works with dark, brooding figures. Morbid Materiality: Dickens was famously preoccupied with the objects surrounding death (coffins, waxworks, and cast-off clothing), sharing a very cinematic, object-driven approach to unease with Hitchcock’s use of visual suspense.

If you are just diving into his work, exploring his eerie tales—such as The Signalman or his short stories available on Audible—is a great way to experience that distinct Hitchcockian tension through a 19th-century lens.

Dickens contribution to:

• theater,
• burlesque,
• pantomime,
• harlequinade: a harlequinade is an energetic, slapstick-filled comic theatrical genre that evolved from Italian  commedia dell'arte. Popularized in 18th-century England, it features Harlequin pursuing his true love, Columbine, while outwitting her foolish father (Pantaloon) and a mischievous clown in chaotic chase scenes.

Query:

Would you say that after Shakespeare comes Charles Dickens as far as literary importance is concerned?

Reply: 

While Charles Dickens is a monumental figure in English literature, few literary critics rank him universally as the second most important writer after Shakespeare. Literary importance is highly subjective, and the title of "second" often goes to writers like John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer, or Jane Austen, depending on the historical era and critical framework.

A breakdown of how literary critics and scholars view their respective importance highlights the nuances between the two:

Why Shakespeare Stands Alone

William Shakespeare generally sits uncontested at the center of the Western literary canon. His plays are credited with actively shaping the English language, possessing unparalleled psychological depth, and exploring universal themes so broadly that they can be adapted across all cultures and generations.

The Case for Charles Dickens

Dickens is an undisputed titan of the 19th century. Celebrated as Shakespeare's heir for his exuberant imagination and capacity to create vast arrays of memorable characters, his impact stems from:

• Cultural Resonance: He effectively shaped the modern conception of Christmas and influenced child labor and legal reforms in Victorian England.
• Mythic Characters: Names like Ebenezer Scrooge, Oliver Twist, and Miss Havisham have transcended their original books into global archetypes.

Other Contenders for "Number Two"

Literary scholars and authoritative lists often place other monumental figures in the running just behind Shakespeare, including:

John Milton: Highly regarded for Paradise Lost, his mastery of blank verse and epic scale profoundly influenced subsequent English poetry. 

Geoffrey Chaucer: The "Father of English Literature" who established the literary prestige of the English language long before Shakespeare. 

Jane Austen: Frequently ranked above Dickens in reader polls, lauded for her unmatched precision, psychological realism, and influence on the development of the modern novel. 

Leo Tolstoy: From a global perspective, the Russian author of War and Peace is routinely cited as the greatest novelist of all time.

While Dickens may not universally hold the definitive second spot, his legendary status, massive global reach, and critical acclaim guarantee him a secure position in the uppermost echelon of literary giants.

First chapter: Dickens' debt to the theater, to burlesque, to pantomime, to the harlequinade, because it is central to his way of functioning as one of the greatest artistic geniuses of the 19th century.

Will start with the actress Nelly Ternan.

With The Mystery of Edwin Drood, in which he changed direction as an artist and explored the human consciousness in a way that anticipated the developments of psyhology and literary modernism.

Charles Dickens is no writer like no other a sui generis figure, unique in the 19th century.

Glory age of the English novel. In his infancy, Jane Austen was stil at work, and Sir Walter Scott. His contemporaries included the Brontẽ sisters, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Williams Makepeace Thackery. Dickens was fundamentally different from any of them, for reasons that we shall explore. 

Great visionary poems. -- the phrase A. N. Wilson uses to describe Dickens' novels. As great visionary poems, as fairy tales, as pantomimes, as it would be talk of them as novels in the prosaid tradition  in which, say Trollope, excelled.

Of all the great novelists, Dickens is the most mysterious.

His house in Kent: Gad's Hill Place, near Rochester, June 1870, dies.

The Jewish Annotated New Testament -- Sanhedrin -- Paul -- May 11, 2026

Sanhedrin: important during the time of Christ; highest legislative and judicial assemblies in ancient Israel.

Etymology:

Did Paul have connection with Sanhedrin?

The Jewish Annotated New Testament -- Pharisees And Sadducees -- April 23, 2026

Pharisees vs Sadducees:

Pharisees -- "P" for popular; middle class

Sadducees -- "S" for stuck-up; wealthy, Temple-focused, disappeared after 70 AD

The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Edited With An Introduction By Elizabeth D. Samet, c. 2019 -- May 9, 2026

The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Edited With An Introduction By Elizabeth D. Samet, c. 2019. 

A Liveright Annotated History.

Incredibly good book and perhaps the heaviest / densest book I have in my library.

Table of Contents: 8 pages.

Editor's Note: pages xv - xxi

A Note On The Text: xxiii - xxiv 

Editor's Introduction: Reintroducing Ulysses S. Grant, pages xxv - lxxiv

Volume I: starts on page 3.

Preface

Chapter 1: Ancestry -- Birth -- Boyhood 

Volume II: starts on page 509.

Chapter 40: ..... Arrival at Chattanooga 

Chapter 41: Assuming the Command at Chattnooga 

 

Chapter 55: ..... Cold Harbor ...

*******************************
Introduction

The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Edited With An Introduction By Elizabeth D. Samet, c. 2019.  

I've read his Memoirs twice, and maybe parts of his Memoirs several times. I doubt I will ever read the complete annotated volume edited by Elizabeth D Samet, and I won't read it from start to finish, but will read the parts I want to read when I want to read them and in the order I want to read them.

Tonight, of course, I'm reading her introduction. Absolutely fascinating.

A list of the authors US Grant and his fellow students read when they were at the US Military Academy (West Point):

• Edward Bulwer-Lytton: eclectic, versatile
• James Fenimore Cooper
• Frederick Marryat: seafaring novels
• Walter Scott
• Washington Irving, a local celebrity living near West Point in the Hudson Valley
• Charles James Lever 

The editor's information on Sir Walter Scott and his (Walter Scott's) connection to the US Civil War is an incredible piece of sleuthing and/or observation.  

I don't think the publishers could have found an editor better "fit" for this job -- being the editor of this annotated volume. From the introduction, one sees that Elizabeth D Samet knows her stuff. Page xxxvi, at the bottom: 

The British writer Robert Southey coined the term autobiography in 1809 ... the early biographers were often soldiers or saints ... the tradition of lives by people ... arguably began with Michel de Montaigne in the late sixteenth century, and it includes a range of writers from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Gertrude Stein, Lillian Hellman, James Baldwin, and Joan Didion. 

Its rich international history notwithstanding, life writing occupies a special place in the cultural history of the United States. "Autobiography," the critic Jay Parini suggests, "could easily be called the essential American genre, a form of writing closely allied to our national self-consciousness." 

When Grant was coming of age as a reader during the antebellum period, the field already included seventeenth-century Puritan spiritual autobiographies, Indian captivity narratives, and travel memoirs. To these would be added artistically as well as politically significant slave narratives by Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass, among others. There was also the watershed Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, first published in the United States in 1818. Franklin's repurposing of autobiography, which before him had been devoted to spiritual betterment, as a chronicle of intellectual, social, and financial as much as moral self-improvement launched a secular tradition that would eventually encompass Henry Adams, P. T. Barnum, and Grant himself. By the time Grant started writing his memoirs in the mid-1880s, a postbellum flood of Civil War reminiscences had already gathered considerable momentum. Stylistic and political fashions would change in the ensuing decades, but the American enthusiasm for life writing has never diminished. 

 

Silicon Valley — 2013 — A Blog -- May 5, 2026

Link here.

A travelogue.

Wiki travel.

Malcolm Harris: The History of Palo Alto, c. 2023.  

The Jewish Annotated New Testament -- Ioudaios -- April 23, 2026

From pages 596 - 599: Ioudaios (feminie Ioudaia, plural Ioudaioi): the Greek word for "Jew" or "Judean." 

"Jew" or "Judean." And that's the issue of this essay.

Wiki: link here. 

Ioudaios (Ancient Greek: Ἰουδαῖος; pl. Ἰουδαῖοι Ioudaioi) is an Ancient Greek ethnonym used in classical and biblical literature which commonly translates to "Jew" or "Judean." 

The choice of translation is the subject of frequent scholarly debate, given its central importance to passages in the Bible (both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament) as well as works of other writers such as Josephus and Philo. 

Translating it as Jews is seen to imply connotations as to the religious beliefs of the people, whereas translating it as Judeans confines the identity within the geopolitical boundaries of Judea. 

A related translation debate refers to the terms ἰουδαΐζειν (verb), literally translated as "Judaizing" (compare Judaizers), and Ἰουδαϊσμός (noun), controversially translated as Judaism or Judeanism.

The contents of the essay: absolutely amazing. 

From earlier in the book, see page 168: 

At the same time, the Gospel is highly disturbing in its representation of "the Jews" (GK hoi Ioudaioi). "The Jews, are the archenemies of Jesus and his followers; they are oblivious to the truth and relentless in pursuit of Jesus to the point of masterminding his demise Their behavior towards Jesus and their failure to believe demonstrate that they have relinquished their covenantal relationship with the God of Israel, and show them to be instead the children of the devil. For this reason, John's Gospel has been called both the most Jewish and the most anti-Jewish of the Gospels.

On page 173, "John and Anti-Judaism," the author refers us to the essay on p. 596, Ioudaios. One of the most fascinating essays I've read on the subject and explains my own confusion with how to refer to Judea / Israel; and how to understand the words "Jew/Judaism." 

A very, very good essay.  

The Jewish Annotated New Testament -- Paul -- April 23, 2026

*************************
Philistines vs Pharisees

******************************* 
Jews and Jesus: The Crucifixion 

AI query:

I really have no fight in this and I really don't care, but I'm curious where this issue stands. 

The issue: whether "the" Jews handed Jesus over to be crucified, or whether it was the non-Jewish (some would say "pagan") Romans that handed Jesus over to be crucified.= 

Most likely it was a mob of many different individuals and/or groups, but reading John in the NRSV, it is very clear that John was attributing the Jews as being instrumental, and the authorities being somewhat unsure that Jesus was guilty as charged and if so, whether it warranted the death penalty (by crucifixion). So, where do religious scholars generally stand on this issue in the 21st century?

Long, long reply:

******************************
Paul's Journeys

 

 

**********************************

ACTS

This book was written -- much like a journal -- by Paul's traveling companion, Luke, a physician, interestingly enough.

 

Starting with the later chapters of Acts. 

 

The last few chapters end with the story of John being taken from Caesaria on the M. coast of Judah, northwest of Jerusalem. John went through a series of "courts" until he "demanded" to be heard / tried by the Emperor in Rome, probably Nero, around the time of the great Roman fire.

 The Book of Acts ends abruptly when John arrives in Rome. The last paragraph, and the last sentence:

He (John) lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.  

So, now "the thirteen letters in the name of Paul, followed by the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, and seven letters attributed to major figures in the history of the early Church (Peter [2]; John the Apostle [3]; James, brother of Jesus [1]; Jude, another brother of Jesus 1]).

 

Paul: instrumental in establishing a series of churches beginning in Antioch (Syria), well north of Phoenicia,  through Turkey (inland) to Macedonia, back through Turkey (coastal), through Rhodes and then by boat passing just south of Cyprus, and then back to Phoenicia and then to Judea and Jerusalem. 

 

*************************
Trials and Tribulations

Felix, Festus, and King Agrippa II.

 

  EPISTLES  

ROMANS

 

 Romans: the longest and "thus" the first. 

 

 

Graham Greene -- Our Man In Lisbon — The Garbo Network -- April 3, 2026

See chapter 13 of Norman Sherry's three-volume biography of Graham Greene. Link here for notes.