ISBN: 0-88739-358-6
208 pp.
Size: 5.5 x 7
Pub Date: 7/2000
Paperback Original
Price: $12.95
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Hard Times: The Lost Diary of Mrs. Charles Dickens
Daniel Panger
Every so often our attention is drawn to some intriguing historical finding or other. In Hard Times, for example, Unitarian Minister Daniel Panger discovers a rare literary treasure in an English chapel in the town of Godalming. Among dust-covered bundles of ledgers and church records he finds "one heavy volume of tooled leather, cracked and green with age..." He opens it and begins reading the journal that Charles Dickens' wife Catherine kept while she and her husband visited America. At first, Kate Dickens is reluctant to put words on paper, being the wife of so celebrated an author. But in the course of her jottings she finds her own voice and becomes downright self-revelatory.
"The time will come . . . when his popularity will fade and attention and affection of the public will be directed elsewhere. Look how the reputation of Jane Austen has begun to fade. For my taste she was a more accomplished author than Mr. Charles Dickens."
"Make no mistake about it, Mr. Dickens is a strange man. I wonder, had I known how strange, in ways how unfathomable, would I have married him . . .in so many ways Mr. Dickens is still a stranger to me. Not so I to him. Kate is as familiar and reliable and comfortable as an old pair of bedroom slippers. Good old Kate! Well, Mr. Dickens, you are lucky to have me. I can't help wondering, Mr. Charles Dickens, how you will fare if I and my shoulders should one day crumble."
Bio: DANIEL PANGER, tireless researcher that he is, plans to trek the entire Sierra Madre mountain range in Mexico if need be to unearth B. Traven's secreted notebooks.
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