In an ‘Oliver Twist’ prequel, Fagin gets a first name — and the spotlight
Allison Epstein’s novel 'Fagin the Thief' fleshes out, but does not sanitize, Dickens’ notoriously antisemitic character
Charles Dickens
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Film & TV Does ‘The Artful Dodger’ finally fix the Fagin problem?
How a new take on ‘Oliver Twist’ finds its Jewish villain in a church
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Books So, what do we do with a monstrous, antisemitic man like Charles Dickens?
The case against the author goes far beyond one offensive character in 'Oliver Twist'
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Books Charles Dickens: A friend of the Jews?
A 1912 Yiddish newspaper article tried to simplify Charles Dickens' relationship with the Jews. The real story is messier, but far more interesting.
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Culture Searching For Jews in British Children’s Literature Beyond the Stereotypes
● Jews and Jewishness in British Children’s Literature By Madelyn Travis Routledge, 200 pages, $125 American book mavens who have delighted in growing up reading works by zesty authors who have a strong sense of Jewish identity, such as E. L. Konigsburg and Maurice Sendak, should be aware that readers in other countries are not…
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Culture Miriam Margolyes Is Dickens of an Actress
When I met Miriam Margolyes at her friend’s cozy apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, she was sporting a bold floral house dress and a shock of wild white hair that seemed at odds with her upper-crust British accent. While she checked emails, she asked if I wanted anything to eat or drink, then admitted…
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The Schmooze Laughter and Horror at Dickens’s Bicentenary
Dickens 2012, the official UK website celebrating English novelist Charles Dickens on the bicentenary year of his birth, is mostly silent on the author’s anti-Semitism, most famously expressed in the notorious characters of Fagin in “Oliver Twist.” A Jewish villain, albeit a comic one, Fagin is still highly offensive to many, as PBS discovered in…
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The Schmooze Adah Isaacs Menken: a Civil War-era Sexpot Remembered
The 19th century New Orleans-born entertainer and sex symbol Adah Isaacs Menken is still shivering timbers long after her premature death in 1868. Back in 2003, Renée M. Sentilles, a history professor at Case Western Reserve University, published an enjoyable scholarly analysis with Cambridge University Press, “Performing Menken: Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of…
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