Ralph Fiennes on ‘The Invisible Woman,’ a Dickensian Tale
Johan Persson; David Appleby/Sony Pictures Classics
From left, Toby Irvine and Ralph Fiennes in “Great Expectations,” directed by Mike Newell; and Mr. Fiennes as Charles Dickens and Felicity Jones as Nelly Ternan in “The Invisible Woman,” directed by Mr. Fiennes.
By TERRENCE RAFFERTY
“He still preoccupies me, Dickens, as a person,” Ralph Fiennes said recently, between bites of grilled salmon in the back room of a quiet restaurant on a bright, breezy October day in New York. His film “The Invisible Woman,” which he directed and in which he stars as Charles Dickens, had just been screened for the news media at the Walter Reade Theater a few blocks away, and he’d spent half an hour afterward fielding questions about the strange, painful love story the movie tells. So you would think he might, at this point, be rather Dickensed out. He was not. “The psychology of him fascinates me, still,” he said, softly, sounding a little surprised himself. “Who was he, really?”
This is one of my very most favorite musicals of all time. I loved the original production, but I am assured by people whose taste I trust that this new production will not disappoint.
Works by Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and EM Forster have fallen in popularity over the last two decades, according to new research of the literary canon.
The screen adaptation of Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, starring Dame Judi Dench (second from left), has dramatically increased the popularity of the book at libraries Cranford Miss Tomkinson (Deborah Findlay), Miss Matty Jenkins (Judi Dench), Miss Octavia Pole (Imelda Staunton), Mrs Forrester (Julia McKenzie)Photo: BBC
They are the books that have stood the test of time – not to mention the ones we are all supposed to have read.
But an analysis of reading habits has revealed that some of the most celebrated classics of English literature have fallen out of fashion in recent years.
Works by Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and EM Forster have seen their popularity plummet over the last two decades, while those by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and George Orwell have fared much better.
The study involves a comparison of lending data from Britain’s libraries for 50 classics by British and Irish authors from the literary canon from the early 1990s, a decade ago, and last year.
It shows some clear winners and losers, with all featured works by the first three named authors rising in the list over the period and all of those by other three falling.
