February 2012
No. 117

From the Fact File

by Terry McQuilkin

Where the Dickens?

This month marks the bicentenary of one of the English-speaking world's most beloved authors, and certainly the most popular of the Victorian age. With his unmatchable powers of description, trenchant humor and distinctive ability to combine realism with the absurd, Charles Dickens has captivated readers for over 175 years.

Help us celebrate the man who gave us Copperfield, Pip, Fagin, Heep, Gradgrind, Scrooge and the rest by doing this month's Fact File. Each of the ten quotations below is taken from a Dickens novel; you are asked to name the work from whence the sentence is taken.

  1. "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

  2. A ride of two hundred and odd miles in severe weather, is one of the best softeners of a hard bed that ingenuity can devise.

  3. A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

  4. Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

  5. The thoughts of worldly men are forever regulated by a moral law of gravitation, which, like the physical one, holds them down to earth.

  6. "Please, sir, I want some more."

  7. There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.

  8. I entertain a weak idea that the English people are as hard-worked as any people upon whom the sun shines. I acknowledge to this ridiculous idiosyncrasy, as a reason why I would give them a little more play.

  9. The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government.

  10. Oh, moralists, who treat of happiness and self-respect, innate in every sphere of life, and shedding light on every grain of dust in God's highway, so smooth below your carriage-wheels, so rough beneath the tread of naked feet, bethink yourselves in looking on the swift descent of men who HAVE lived in their own esteem, that there are scores of thousands breathing now, and breathing thick with painful toil, who in that high respect have never lived at all, nor had a chance of life!

After you've identified the ten novels, submit your answers to Fact File by February 24. The submitter who correctly identifies the greatest number of works will be treated to a gift card worth $10 toward purchases at the Duck Store; in case of a tie, one winner will be chosen by lot. The contest is open to all staff and faculty members of UO Libraries.

Terry McQuilkin was a London street urchin until the age of 10, when he was put into a workhouse by the authorities, where he subsisted on gruel and diluted milk. He escaped two years later and boarded a ship for America. He is now works for Access Services Department as the Douglass Room Supervisor.