Dickens' Women

A celebration of the singular female characters to be found in Dickens's works In his novels Dickens presents a series of unrivaled portraits of women, young and old. From Little Nell to Miss Havisham, these girls and women speak to audiences today, making readers laugh and sometimes cry. The popular British actress Miriam Margolyes will be touring the world in 2012, the bicentenary of Dickens birth, with a one-woman show about Dickens' women, and this book accompanies the show by building on the script and expanding to include many more of the female characters Dickens described and analyzed so astutely in his novels. "Mrs Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury."

Miriam Margolyes is an actor best known for her appearances as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films. She is also a life-long Dickens enthusiast who hosted the BBC documentary series Dickens' America and is a regular attendee at the annual Dickens Universe scholarly conference, held each summer at UC Santa Cruz.