What if Eric Carle had written his famous kid’s book about A Very Hungry Cat?

Over at Abe Books, a satirical essay reimagined the covers of 18 popular books to feature cats.

These cats now grace the covers of A Tale of Two Kitties (Charles Dickens‘ A Tale of Two Cities), Lord of the Fleas (William Golding‘s Lord of the Flies) and The Girl with the Kitten Tattoo (Stieg Larsson‘s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). What other books could use this theme?

Over at UneekDollDesigns, artist Debbie Ritter sells handmade dolls of famous authors and celebrated literary characters.

The collection includes the trio of ghosts who haunt Ebenezer Scrooge. Ritter has also created dolls of Jane Eyre from Charlotte Bronte‘s famous novel and Mrs. Haversham from Dickens’ Great Expectations.

Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit come as a matching set. Flavorpill made a list of other dolls, including Shel Silverstein, J.R.R. Tolkien and Joyce Carol Oates. Above, we’ve embedded a Mark Twain doll. What’s your favorite?

The New Yorker ran a long dispatch from Jill Lepore at the annual Dickens Universe at the University of California, Santa Cruz, an event she called “Charles Dickens camp.”

Here’s more about the event: “a week of discussing Dickens, sleeping in dormitories, and eating in a cafeteria, bringing together literary scholars, teachers, and students, with readers who love Dickens. Every year the campers read a different book. This year, it was “Great Expectations,” which also happens to have been a recent selection of Oprah’s Book Club.”

This GalleyCat editor loves, loves, loves the idea of going to summer camp to study your favorite author. What author do you think deserves their own summer camp? If you like the idea of Dickens camp, the project depends on donations during these tough economic times. Follow this link to donate.

While many know actor Ralph Fiennes for playing Harry Potter‘s nemesis Lord Voldemort, he has also started directing. One of his post-Harry Potter film projects includes directing an adaptation of The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin.

The nonfiction book tells the story of an affair between Great Expectations author Charles Dickens (pictured, via) and actress Nelly Ternan. According to The Guardian, Abi Morgan wrote the script. The release is set for late 2012, coinciding with Dickens’ 200th birthday.

Here’s more from the article: “Dickens was 45 when he met Ternan, then 18, in 1857. Their relationship remained secret from the public, even after Dickens’s separation from his wife the following year. Ternan travelled with the author for the rest of his life; after his death, she married a man 12 years her junior, having disguised her own age as 23, rather than 37.”

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Yesterday the Random House Twitter feed took the popular “undatable” topic and collected examples of undatable literary characters at the new Undateable In Lit hashtag.

Here’s the tweet referencing a classic character from Charles Dickens‘ Great Expectations: “Let’s give ‘undateable” a bookish twist. We’ll start: wearing a wedding dress every day since being left at the altar. #UndateableInLit.” The Huffington Post made a slideshow of some great examples.

Add your undatable character to the Undateable In Lit hashtag. We contributed Don Quixote–an undatable literary character who wears armor, wrecks windmills and spends too much time playing LARP games. Follow these links to read free eBook versions of Great Expectations or Don Quixote.

In celebration of the New York Public Library’s centennial festival weekend, game designer Jane McGonigal has crafted the “Find the Future” scavenger hunt.

500 players will join the “Write All Night” event on May 20th. Inside the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, they will use laptops and smartphones to find 100 objects from the library’s collection of treasures and perform a related-writing challenge.

The video embedded above features a promo clip for the event; it seems to mimic The Da Vinci Code‘s film trailer. If you want to participate, just answer this question: “In the year 2021, I will become the first person to __________.” Submit your answer before 11:59 PM Pacific Time on April 21st.

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Thirty writers and actors joined a marathon reading of the classic holiday tale, A Christmas Carol at New York City’s Housing Works Bookstore Cafe before the holidays. In an article about the event, Bookish compared the reading to a similar reading staged by Charles Dickens in 1867. Editor’s note: We’ve added some commentary from Housing Works Books below.

A trailer for an animated adaptation is embedded above. Here’s more from  Bookish: “Dickens was greeted with eager fans who waited for tickets overnight in the cold, wrapped in blankets and huddled around bonfires to keep warm. The cops were called in for crowd control. On the first night of his New York tour, a sold-out audience of more than 2,000 literary socialites and powerful businessmen gathered in the grand Steinway Hall by Central Park. They cried, laughed, and interrupted with applause during Dickens’ reading.”

According to the article, only about “a half-dozen” of the attendees stayed for the entire 3-hour reading. Literary enthusiasts aren’t what they used to be in the 19th century. Bah, humbug!

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Oprah Winfrey picked a classic double header for her latest book club selection, choosing Charles Dickens‘ Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities.

During her announcement, Winfrey noted: “I’m going old, old school … Normally I only choose books that I have read, but I must shamefully admit to you all that I have never read Dickens.”

Winfrey will use Penguin’s new $20 paperback containing both books and nearly 800 pages. Amazon noted yesterday they have free Kindle editions of both titles. Penguin offers a $7.99 digital edition that includes illustrations, author background, and historical information.

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The Victoria and Albert Museum in London seeks donations to preserve and restore three handwritten Charles Dickens manuscripts from acid paper rot. They hope to raise £25,000 (more than $40,000) to save the manuscripts.

The Guardian has a quote from John Meriton, the museum’s deputy keeper of word and image: “At the moment we can’t display these manuscripts safely because they are so damaged and so fragile … They were last conserved in the 1960s, when they were rebound and placed in what are called ‘guard books’. But the backing paper used, unfortunately, was very acidic, causing a lot of stress to the original manuscript leaves.”

According to the article, the collection includes A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield. The other manuscript, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was never published.  (Via CBC News)

New Zealand activists are fighting to keep filming for the upcoming The Hobbit adaptation in that country, the same place where Peter Jackson filmed the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. According to these passionate protesters, “New Zealand is Middle Earth.”

The Guardian reports that Warner Bros. executives will decide this week if the shoot will be in New Zealand.  Prime Minister John Keys will personally oversee the negotiations, hoping that producers will make a decision in his country’s favor.

The article adds: “A dispute over pay and conditions led producers to hint that they might move filming to another country. Carrying banners proclaiming ‘New Zealand is Middle Earth’ and ‘We Love Hobbits,’ a reported 2-3,000 people gathered in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, and other cities such as Auckland and Christchurch in advance of a visit by executives from the studio Warner Bros.”

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