Charles Dickens' To Be Read at Dusk (1852).

He would have found his way here sooner or later.  That's because he's one of the Big Names.  He belongs to that select group of writers whose fame and renown grants him the kind of status which allows us to know of him, even if we've never read so much as a single word he ever wrote.  This is the weird game that history likes to play with those lucky handful of authors whose writings were good enough to leave such an impact on their times, that they became this strange kind of pop culture juggernaut.  Time hasn't been able to erase our awareness of Charles Dickens, though it has managed to flatten our understanding of who he is, and what he did.  If he's known for anything these days, then it all comes down to just one, or maybe a handful of his efforts.  The most well known of course remains the Christmas Carol.  It's become so much a staple of the Holidays, that we've paid the author the worst sort of compliment he could have imagined.  We've taken what was meant as a social plea for the plight of the poor and the English working class, and turned it into a Hallmark Card about "keeping good cheer" at least once near the end of every year.  I have said that pop culture has a way of playing tricks on those artists who manage to stay alive in it.  I should also point out that sometimes these trick can turn a good reputation into the worst sort of cruelty.

Still, for better or worse, this bit of historical irony is what has allowed Dickens to survive in the memories of countless fans who have never heard of him from his numerous volume of books.  Beyond the Carol itself, he's perhaps remembered also as the author of books like Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and for being the creator of both David Copperfield and Oliver Twist.  That's a handsome sampling so far as pop culture memory goes.  The saving grace there is that all of the books and characters just listed do go a long way toward giving a fair overview of the writer, and a good idea of his best strengths as an artist.  Dickens has been lucky in that regard.  He may not have escaped all the vagaries and tricks that time and history likes to play on those it can bother to remember, he never gets it as bad as others.  Instead, the former street urchin who once had to earn his keep by the sheer will power of his words as a grubbing journalist now gets to take up the same shelf space as his most famous forebearer, Shakespeare, and alongside his near contemporary, Jane Austen.  They seem to have become a trio of gold standards that all the rest are compared to.  Or at least that's seems to be the effort on someone's part out there.  It might all be a construction of the Ivory Tower, yet at least these Names are being recognized in some way for the genuine strength of their talents as writers and storytellers.

At the same time, the fact remains there was always more to Dickens' reputation that just these handful of later Sketches by Boz.  He's also written plenty of other stories that no one, not even tenured academic scholars, have bothered to give much time or attention to.  Since The Scriblerus Club has a policy of shining the spotlight on the stories that fall through the cracks, it does make enough sense to try and see if the formula can be applied where you wouldn't expect it.  What happens if we take a well known writer, and then bring the audience's attention to some of his lesser known efforts?  I think it can be done, and what's interesting in this case is that it follows up on, and continues a bit of criticism from a previous post.  The last review published on this blog was about an item in Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.  The big revelation of that article was how the chilling story of "The Dream" had its origins in a very specific literary source.  It's possible to claim that the true author of that story is a Victorian Gothic writer by the name of Elizabeth Gaskell.  She's an important, yet overlooked architect in the construction of the modern Horror genre as we now know it today.  This importance extends all the way to a greater understanding of such genre tropes as the Final Girl.

It all got its start thanks to the efforts of writers like Liz Gaskell and Anne Radcliffe.  The review of "The Dream" goes into greater detail on these topics, and there has to be more worth exploring on the topic of how women constructed the Horror genre as an expression of protest and satire.  For now though, the relevant thing about that previous article is that it was mentioned in passing that one of Gaskell's friend was none other than the author of A Christmas Carol.  She remained a contributor to not just one, but two magazines owned by Dickens, Household Words, and All the Year Round.  It was a position and a friendship she would maintain to the end of her life.  In fact, as pointed out in "The Dream" review, it seems that Dickens himself might have tried his hand at bringing Liz Gaskell's untold tale of modern day Folk Horror to life in a short story of his own.  It's the content of that short story that I'd like to unpack, examine, and compare/contrast now.  It's a story that's meant "To Be Read at Dusk".