The question, prompted by two Charles Dickens novels, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, being named to prompted to put the issue to two Dickens scholars: �ֲ���ý Professor of English Lillian Nayder and Michael Slater, a Dickens biographer and professor emeritus of Victorian literature at Birkbeck College in London.

Said Nayder, “There’s no doubt that A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations will speak to our own concerns with social inequity, mismanagement and greed.” And, she added, “any recent college graduate still living at home and looking for work is also likely to relate to Pip, with his thwarted ambitions and his modest career.”

Nayder is author of (Cornell University Press, 2010), the first comprehensive portrait of the woman whom Charles Dickens married and then repudiated as unfit after 22 years of marriage and 10 children. Nayder’s book demonstrates that Catherine Dickens was a competent woman and her marriage a happy one for much of its duration.

Related stories about The Other Dickens:

• Dec. 12, 2010
• by the WSJ
• writer Ray Routhier
• ‘s David Sargent ’62

In this issue:

1. Please join President Hansen’s Year-End Teleconference Dec. 8
2. Climate-related Shetlands project receives $619,000 NSF grant
3. Med school plans for fall 2012? Contact �ֲ���ý for help by Jan. 10
4. Nayder’s biography debunks popular notion of Charles Dickens’ wife
5. Audio: Duina talks about winning and happiness on ‘The Academic Minute’
6. Slide show: Trashion Show 2010
7. Support �ֲ���ý today and earn tax benefits for 2010
8. �ֲ���ý teams offer exciting outlook for winter athletics
9. Heating curtailment plan will save money, carbon emissions during break
10. �ֲ���ý in the News

1. Please join President Hansen’s Year-End Teleconference Dec. 8
Intending to touch on everything from �ֲ���ý’ new mission statement to a recent update of the Campus Facilities Master Plan, President Elaine Tuttle Hansen welcomes you to a Year-End Update Teleconference at noon EST on Dec. 8.

2. Climate-related Shetlands project receives $619,000 NSF grant
The National Science Foundation grant will fund faculty and student researchers who are part of an international project investigating a once-thriving Shetland Islands settlement that was buried by storm-blown sand during extreme Little Ice Age climate shifts in the 1600s. Ultimately, the project could inform responses to future environmental challenges caused by climate change.

3. Med school plans for fall 2012? Contact �ֲ���ý for help by Jan. 10
Alums applying to medical school or dental school for fall 2012 matriculation and who wish to interview with the �ֲ���ý Medical Studies Committee have a noon, Jan. 10, 2011, deadline to register. Forms are available at www.bates.edu/x222663.xml. Please send materials, including a photo, to Laurie McConnell, Carnegie Science Hall Room 109, 44 Campus Ave., Lewiston ME 04240. E-mail questions to Karen Daigler, kdaigler@bates.edu, or Lee Abrahamsen, labraham@bates.edu.

4. Nayder’s biography debunks popular notion of Charles Dickens’ wife
English professor Lillian Nayder’s book The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth is not only the first comprehensive portrait of the woman whom Charles Dickens married and then repudiated, but also debunks the widely held but untrue reason as to why Dickens left Hogarth. She really wasn’t mentally unstable; but he was less than faithful.

5. Audio: Duina talks about winning and happiness on ‘The Academic Minute’
Does winning really make us happy? �ֲ���ý sociologist Francesco Duina explores that and other questions in his new book, Winning: Reflections on an American Obsession. In recent media interviews and appearances, including public radio’s The Academic Minute, Duina articulates why American zeal to win may not yield the spoils we hope for.

6. Slide show: Trashion Show 2010
The year’s most popular and stylish green event at �ֲ���ý is the Trashion Show. Besides being a showcase for student creativity and spirit, the show also raises awareness of the trash we produce and the recycling initiatives aimed at minimizing it.

7. Support �ֲ���ý today and earn tax benefits for 2010
When you make a financial gift to �ֲ���ý — cash, appreciated stock or other property — you further �ֲ���ý’ academic excellence while also, in many cases, receiving a charitable deduction on your 2010 income taxes. The personal benefits of giving can also include life-income plans that provide tax advantages and lifetime payments to you, then support for �ֲ���ý thereafter. To plan such a gift, please e-mail the Office of Gift Planning at giftplanning@bates.edu or call 800-762-3145 for a customized illustration. Website:

8. �ֲ���ý teams offer exciting outlook for winter athletics
The winter athletic season is off to a hot start for the Bobcat men’s and women’s basketball teams. Other winter teams have also dipped their toes into competition, while still others warm up for January.
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9. Heating curtailment plan will save money, carbon emissions during break
In an effort to reduce energy consumption on campus, �ֲ���ý will turn down the heat in buildings across campus during the winter break. The adjustments are expected to save money and reduce the College’s emissions of greenhouse gases.

10. �ֲ���ý in the News
A passion for politics and public service shines through The Portland Press Herald‘s profile of new Maine Senate President Kevin Raye ’83, while various news outlets report that Metropolis Ensemble founder Andrew Cyr ’96 has gained a Grammy nomination. The Daily Mirror of Sri Lanka profiles arts entrepreneur Sulo Dissanayake ’09, who has completed her Watson travel fellowship.

Professor of English Lillian Nayder’s new biography The Other Dickens: A Life of Catherine Hogarth –the first comprehensive portrait of the woman whom Charles Dickens married and then repudiated — is now available online and in bookstores from .

The book explains that after 22 years of marriage and 10 children, Charles pressured Catherine to leave their home, unjustly alleging that she was mentally disordered — unfit and unloved as wife and mother. The novelist’s version of events remains widely held, but Nayder’s book debunks it, demonstrating that Catherine Dickens was a competent woman and her marriage a happy one for much of its duration.

“Her story is interesting on a variety of levels,” says Nayder, “and I felt she deserved to have it told in a way that questioned Dickens’ own allegations about her, because they have been accepted even though there was plenty of evidence to suggest that they were false.”

Drawing on personal correspondence, banking records and other documentary materials, Nayder has painted the first well-rounded portrait of a figure heretofore known only as “Mrs. Charles Dickens” — a daughter, sister and friend; loving mother and grandmother; capable household manager; and an intelligent person whose company was valued and sought by a wide circle of women and men.

Nayder also offers new insights into the relations among the four Hogarth sisters, and along the way draws larger lessons about family relationships and the legal and social status of women during the Victorian era.

It’s telling, Nayder points out, that Charles used hypnotism, then called mesmerism, on his wife. “I focus on mesmerism as a motif for their marriage,” she says. “I consider the relationship between mesmerism and matrimony for Catherine, and that suspension of self that’s a part of mesmerism and was also a part of marriage at that time.”

A Dickens scholar, Nayder is the author of Unequal Partners: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Victorian Authorship, published by Cornell in 2002. A resident of New Gloucester, she began teaching at �ֲ���ý in 1989 and is chair of the English department.

Ghosts from Japan and England will share the podium at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 27, in the Benjamin Mays Center, �ֲ���ý College, when an associate professor of English literature at the University of Kyoto contrasts traditional Japanese ghosts with the spirits in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Professor Toru Sasaki also will participate in a panel discussion titled “Translations East and West” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30, in Chase Hall Lounge, Campus Avenue, �ֲ���ý College. Both events are free and open to the public.

Sasaki has published widely, and his works in English include articles about Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and other Victorian authors. He has edited several English-language volumes by 19th-century authors, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s John Marchmont’s Legacy.

The Oct. 30 panel presentation,  a conversation among scholars, students and the audience, will look at the process of translating literature and at political and economic factors that influence translation and publication. For the discussion, joining Sasaki will be Jane Costlow, professor of Russian and environmental studies and the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, �ֲ���ý College; Melissa Wender, assistant professor of Japanese, �ֲ���ý College; and Tamae Prindle, Oak Professor of East Asian Language and Literature, Colby College.

Sasaki is the guest of �ֲ���ý Professor of English Lillian Nayder, who met the Japanese scholar in his country when she delivered a series of lectures on Catherine Dickens, the harried wife of well-known Victorian author Charles Dickens. While at �ֲ���ý, Sasaki will work with students in two of  Nayder’s courses, “Dickens Revisited” and “Mary Elizabeth Braddon.”

Sasaki’s �ֲ���ý visit is sponsored by the Freeman Foundation, the Tanaka Memorial Foundation, the Mellon Learning Associates Program in the Humanities and the Department of English.

Lillian Nayder

As a graduate student, Lillian Nayder, associate professor of English, developed a keen interest in Charles Dickens. “He was an amazing writer,” she says. But the Victorian author also used people to his own advantage, says Nayder, whose scholarship has sometimes focused on the unfair treatment Dickens often meted out to those close to him.

Nayder’s forthcoming Cornell University Press book, “Unequal Partners: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and Victorian Authorship,” explores the collaborative relationship between Dickens and Collins, author of “The Woman in White” and “The Moonstone” and considered to be the “father” of the modern detective story. According to Nayder, “the book challenges the widely-accepted image of Dickens as a mentor of younger writers such as Collins by pointing to the ways in which Dickens controlled and profited from his literary ‘satellites.'”