David Copperfield, Week 5 ~ and the Dickens Club Schedule

A “General Mems” Post.

(Banner Image: Uriah Heep, by Fred Barnard.)

by Rach

Dear friends! Today’s is a shorter post, as I’ll be putting up the more detailed chapter summary and discussion wrap-up of weeks 4 and 5 of David Copperfield a week from today. We might want to discuss Week 5 under last week’s thread, as there are wonderful conversations to continue!

A few practical things today:

1. On the Trial Bleak House Schedule
2. Poll for our Online Meeting for David Copperfield
3. Links to Dr. Christian’s Lectures for Upcoming Installments
4. A Look-Ahead to Week 5 of David Copperfield

On the Trial Bleak House Schedule

A few notes:

• I have altered the reading schedule just enough to accommodate our next read, Bleak House–beginning on 6 June.
  • Because the majority of the votes in our recent member poll were split between Option 1 and Options 2/3 (2 & 3 being almost the same but 3 having a more flexible approach), we’re thinking of giving a trial run to the longer schedule of Options 2/3 for Bleak House–a full 8 weeks for arguably the greatest Victorian novel–the way we are currently giving a trial to Option 1 for David Copperfield (6 weeks). Then, we’ll check in about which we are preferring.
• For the 8-week format, I’ll do a wrap up every other week.
  • Arguably, by increasing the reading and commenting time, we could get into more back-and-forth discussions. A few of us mentioned that we’re just getting going when it’s time for the next wrap-up.
  • The potential downside is that some momentum is lost. So…let’s see how it goes!
• So, for Bleak House (6 June to 31 July 2023), we’ll have:
  • 8 weeks total
  • An Introduction (Tues, 6 June) plus 4 Wrap-Ups–with a schedule check-in around the 3rd Wrap-Up

Poll for Our Online Meeting for David Copperfield

Friends, Boze and I will be unable to host the meeting on Sat, June 3rd, which is one of the two Saturdays during our break between reads. But not everyone can make the 27th of May, so we thought we’d add in the option of Sat, June 10th for our Copperfield discussion, though we’ll have begun Bleak House by then. Please comment below on your preference/limitations and we’ll just try for the one that seems to work best for most members:

Links to Dr. Christian’s Lectures for Upcoming Installments

For those following along with Dr Christian‘s wonderful lecture series on David Copperfield, the full playlist can be found here.

Below are the lectures for this week’s installments:

Installment XIV

Installment XV

Installment XVI

A Look-Ahead to Week 5 of David Copperfield

If you’re counting, today is Day 490 (and week 71) in our #DickensClub! We’re on the fifth week of David Copperfield, our seventeenth read of the group.

This week, we’ll be reading Chapters 41-50, which constitute the monthly numbers XIV-XVI, published between June and August 1850. I’d recommend continuing the conversation for this week under last week’s post, but here is fine too; or use the hashtag #DickensClub if commenting on twitter!

If you’d like to read it online, you can find it at a number of sites such as The Circumlocution Office, or download it from sites such as Gutenberg.