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Designing with Thermocouples: Get the Most from Your Measurements
More than 60 percent of all industrial temperature measurement applications in the U.S. use thermocouples. Despite their widespread use, there are many misconceptions about thermocouples. This paper will discuss some of the basic technical issues that engineers need to consider when applying thermocouples.12/30/2012
Industrial PCs: Addressing the Top Five Challenges on the Factory Floor
This white paper identifies the top five challenges typically encountered on the factory floor, and offers some criteria to consider when selecting industrial PCs and associated components.12/28/2012
Analysis of 3S CoDeSys Security Vulnerabilities for Industrial Control System Professionals
This White Paper explains:
- What the 3S CoDeSys vulnerabilities are and what an attacker can do with them
- How to find out what control/SCADA devices are affected
- The risks and potential consequences to SCADA and control systems
- The compensating controls that will help block known attack vectors
A number of security vulnerabilities in the CoDeSys Control Runtime System were disclosed in January 2012. In October 2012, fully functional attack tools were also released to the general public.
While CoDeSys is not widely known in the SCADA and ICS field, its product is embedded in many popular PLCs and industrial controllers. Many vendors are potentially vulnerable, and include devices used in all sectors of manufacturing and infrastructure. As a result, there is a risk that criminals or political groups may attempt to exploit them for either financial or ideological gain.
This White Paper summarizes the currently known facts about these vulnerabilities and associated attack tools. It also provides guidance regarding a number of mitigations and compensating controls that operators of SCADA and ICS systems can take to protect critical operations.12/26/2012
Considerations for Wastewater Reuse in the Petroleum and Petrochemical Industry
Water conservation is becoming a major focal point, both in the public and private sector whether it is due to cost of water, availability of water, or environmental concerns.12/22/2012
Getting the Most Out of Your Wastewater Biosolids
Wastewater treatment facilities are generally installed for one purpose - to clean up dirty water so that clean water can be discharged back into the environment. Nearly all municipal treatment plants rely on biological processes for wastewater treatment whereby bacteria and other microorganisms, frequently called 'bugs,' do this job of cleaning up the water.12/20/2012
SCADA Systems - Looking Ahead
This white paper provides insight into the evolution of the modern SCADA system and looks to the very near future by discussing such timely topics as:
- Improving system efficiency and security
- Managing field data and
- Open standards
Special Report from Automation Fair 2012 - Smart. Safe. Sustainable.
The editors of Control and Control Design compiled this special report from the 21st annual Automation Fair event, hosted by Rockwell Automation, in Philadelphia, November 5-8. This interactive PDF includes more than 20 articles documenting highlights ranging from executive keynotes and new product announcements to vertical industry forums and Rockwell Automation Process Solutions User Group and Safety Automation Forum meetings.12/11/2012
Yokogawa User Group: Integrated Solutions for a Sustainable Future
Halloween in New Orleans this year saw more than the usual array of costumed revelers on Bourbon Street. Indeed, hundreds of process automation professionals descended on the Crescent City to exchange ideas and best practices at Yokogawa's 2012 User Group Conference and Exhibition. The Control editorial team was on hand and developed this exclusive report of presentation highlights--on topics ranging from safety system risk management to the latest in data acquisition technology.12/10/2012
How to Select a Pressure Sensor for a Specific Application
There are over two hundred pressure sensor suppliers around the world, offering products from a few dollars to thousands of dollars. A purchaser or engineer unfamiliar with pressure sensors can become overwhelmed with the price range, quality and options. The first step is to understand his/her application from the media being measured, to the desired electrical output for indication or control. The following is a guide through a variety of options to make a prudent decision.
Media is the most important item when selecting a pressure sensor for an application. Most sensor suppliers only sell sensors that are rated for benign environments such as clean, dry air. The next tier of suppliers will sell products that will handle mild environments through to difficult/corrosive environments. Clean water, steam, some forms of hydraulic oils and Freon can be considered mild environments. Difficult media tends to be corrosive liquids and gases such as hydrogen sulfide, hydrochloric acid, bleach, bromides, waste water and hydrogen. Wrongful selection of a pressure sensor can lead to catastrophic failure and serious injury. When unsure, ask the pressure sensor manufacturer to provide a chemical compatibility chart with their products. In fluidic systems, such as water and hydraulics, one must understand how the water hammer and pressure transients effect the pressure sensor.11/15/2012
Comparing Differential Pressure Transmitter Accuracy
Differential pressure transmitters are extremely versatile instruments fitting a broad range of applications in various process industries.11/14/2012
Proper Media Compatibility, Sensing Topology and Grounding Ensure Long-term, Trouble-free Pressure Measurements in Wet and Noisy Electrical Environments
Water is a key element to life. It plays an important role in the world economy, as it functions as a solvent for a variety of chemical substances. 71% of the Earth's surface is covered with water and 97% of that water is in oceans and saline. Only 3% of the earths water is fresh and can be found in the polar caps, glaciers, ground aquifers, lakes, swamps and rivers. In parts of the world where there is limited or no access to fresh water, desalination is being used to convert saline water to drinking water. To manage resources and the flow of water, modern electrical pumps and control systems are employed. Water chemical compatibility and electrical interference are two major challenges for the control systems. Let's ook at two major sources of fresh water and the issues that can limit the performance of the control system.11/14/2012
New Differential Pressure Sensor Incorporates LVDT Technology to Create More Environmentally-Resistant, Dependable and Economical Pressure Sensing Solution
Differential pressure (dP) sensors with electronic signal processing are increasing being used to monitor flow, filter condition and level. Since these devices offer linear and accurate output, they are also replacing the differential pressure switch that only support on-off condition and useless for closed loop control system. These dPs are often configured with expensive valves and fluid filled remote seals for added protection against corrosive media, radiation and/or extreme media temperature ranges when operating in demanding environments. In cold ambient environment specially operating in temperatures below -4 deg F (-20 deg C), the sensor need to be heated either by trace heater or within a heated enclosure to maintain the operation of the dP sensor. In addition to being expensive, these valves and seals tend to be bulky and require time to install and maintain. In many critical applications such as food and pharmaceuticals, filled fluids are a serious concern due to process contamination. In gaseous systems such as hydrogen and oxygen and semiconductor applications, fluid filled sensors are being banned since the leakage of fluid into the process could lead to an explosion and serious safety issues.
A new series of LVDT (linear variable differential transformer) based oil-less dP sensor with dual channel ASIC (applications specific integrated circuit) have been developed that can operate in a wide range of corrosive materials, radiation and temperature without any oil filling and bulky sealing systems. By encapsulating LVDT proven technology with digital compensation, the pressure sensors combine the benefits of friction-free operation, environmental robustness and unlimited mechanical life. By selecting the diaphragm thickness and material properties, Table 1 show the dP ranges that can be produced using the LVDT technology.11/14/2012
Remote Emergency Shutdown Device Improves Safety and Performance at Oil Production Platform
Updated government regulations created a need for a major international oil and gas company to install a direct, real-time communications link at a platform located off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.
ENI Petroleum is an Italian multinational oil and gas company with around 78,400 employees at sites in 77 countries. ENI operates in the oil and gas, electricity generation and sales, petrochemicals, oil field services construction and engineering industries. It has oil and natural gas production of almost two million barrels per day, with exploration and production efforts at sites throughout North American, Africa and Asia.
One of these production locations is an oil well platform called the "Devil's Tower" that is located just off the coast of Louisiana in the Mississippi Canyon region of the Gulf of Mexico. The platform rises 5,610 ft. above the sea bed. Until 2010, it was the deepest production truss spar in the world. Drill ships perform periodic operations within close proximity to subsea pipelines that transport oil and gas to and from the production platform.
In this white paper, you will learn how a new data concentrator system allowed the control room and drill ships to communicate at a distance of more than 100 km, providing security in case of an incident while avoiding costly shutdowns.11/08/2012
Radioactive Isotopes in Process Measurement
An Objective Look at the Roles of Cesium-137 and Cobalt-60 in Nuclear Measurement Systems for Industrial Processes
Level and density measurements in process control are performed by a number of technologies. When the process temperature, pressure, or chemistry is an issue, then nuclear measurement systems have the advantage. These are non-invasive to the vessel and unaffected by the process pressures and chemistries.
Overall, a nuclear measurement system used for process control consists of a gamma energy emitter and detector. An emitter is placed on one side of a vessel to broadcast a beam of energy to the opposite side of the vessel. The detector is placed in the beam on the opposite side of the vessel. The detector will scintillate in the presence of gamma energy and register counts proportional to the field strength. When the process value (level or specific gravity) is low, the detector will register a high number of counts since less gamma energy is blocked by the process material. When the process value is high, more of the gamma energy is blocked which leads to fewer counts.
The two most common gamma emitters used for level and density process measurements are isotopes of cobalt and cesium. The goal of this article is an objective comparison of the roles of cesium-137 and cobalt-60 in process measurement. This will be accomplished by reviewing the properties of the two materials and then comparing the use of the materials in process measurement.11/05/2012
Augment Your Staff: Gain Agility and Expertise Through Flexible Staffing
For many process plants, there are three distinct tasks with respect to their control, instrumentation and information systems -- otherwise known as the automation system. The first task category is operations. and maintenance. The plant must be kept up and running with minimal downtime, with maintenance, performed as needed.
The second task includes continuous improvements. The existing automation system must be made to increase throughput, reduce downtime, cut energy costs, improve quality and make other enhancements to the production processes. These improvements are necessary to stay competitive in worldwide markets, and firms that neglect this task will fall hopelessly behind.
Third, capital projects must be planned and executed for a variety of reasons, from adding capacity to regulatory compliance to changing the range of products produced. In many process plants, operations and maintenance tasks can consume all the available automation professional man-hours from on-site staff, leaving little or no time for continuous improvements and capital projects. In the worst cases, many plants find it difficult to recruit and maintain even the minimal staffing required for operations and maintenance.
There are two possible approaches to address these staffing issues. The first is to add more permanent staff at the plant level, and the second is to seek assistance from an outside service provider such as a systems integrator -- also known as staff augmentation or outsourcing. Adding permanent staff can be problematic at many process plants for a number of reasons as explained below.
As detailed in a recent Control magazine cover story, demand for experienced automation personnel relative to supply is at an all-time high by many indicators. A quote from the article illustrates the point.
"The demand for process automation professionals is high, and the talent pool is small and shrinking," said Alan Carty, president of recruiting firm Automationtechies in Minneapolis. "Systems integrators, end users and process control product manufacturers are all seeking these people. I've been recruiting for 12 years, and I feel that current demand relative to supply is at an all-time peak."
Exacerbating the situation, many process plant managers have trouble recruiting workers to their. specific locales, which are almost always far from the urban areas favored by many automation, professionals, particularly recent graduates.
Another significant issue primarily affects staffing for plant automation operations and maintenance positions, and that's the requirement for 24/7/365 support. When faced with the choice between working regular hours versus being on-call around the clock -- including weekends and holidays - many automation professionals, opt for the former.
Even if these problems are overcome with sufficient staffing for operations and maintenance, providing sufficient personnel for continuous improvement and capital projects remains an issue.
This task in particular often requires specialized skills that existing plant operations and maintenance staff may not possess. Furthermore, many continuous improvement projects and larger capital projects often require relatively high staffing levels for implementation, then much lower staffing levels for ongoing operations and maintenance.10/30/2012
M2M-Building a Connected World
Juniper Research forecasts that there will be a total of 400 million connected devices in service across all industry segments by the end of the forecast period in 2012. From a sector perspective, the last 18 months have seen significant take up of embedded consumer electronics devices, specifically eReaders, a trend which is expected to continue over the forecast period. In addition consumer and commercial telemantics will show increasing device numbers as automotive manufacturers aim to embrace embedded connectivity in the next five years in a new vehicle sales.
While the reality of the M2M market may have fallen short of expectations since its early days, in the 2011 to 2012 period Juniper Research has observed an increasingly coherent approach to the market of both operators and M2M-enablers. On one hand, the interfaces built by companies to manage devices are becoming more sophisticated as the power of the Internet and the cloud are leveraged to their full extent. On the other hand, the automation of delivery and control means that the costs associated with M2M roll outs are reduced, improving the economic viability of M2M projects.
This coincides with a reappraisal by operators of how M2M will deliver revenue, away from standard revenue-per-device towards a revenue model which is defined by the service that is delivered. Both operators and M2M enablers now see the M2M market as a market in its own right, with its own characteristics with respect to revenue generation.
Juniper Research believes that the combination of cloud-based infrastructure and the introduction of technologies such as Bluetooth low-power at an affordable cost will give the market further impetus, while the acquisition route is strengthening some of the most respected M2M companies, affording them an increased level of sophistication.10/24/2012
Applying Color Science to Design Effective Human-Machine Interfaces
Human operators are a key part of any process control system. As such, they constitute part of a complex, causal chain of overall system processing. Human machine interfaces (HMIs) form a key link in that chain by bridging the physical world where processes reside with the perceptual reconstruction and representation of those processes in the heads of human operators and supervisors.
If an HMI design gives rise to a flawed or inaccurate representation of a process, then error and suboptimal task performance may result. HMIs have become increasingly important links in this chain for two reasons. First, the arrival of distributed control systems (DCS) in the 1970s distanced operators from the physical entities they controlled, requiring all interaction be mediated by HMIs. Second, the ongoing introduction of complex automation into process control is increasingly changing human operators into supervisors. Supervision has complex decision-making requirements that must all be conveyed via HMIs.
Download this entire white paper to learn more.10/09/2012
Adapting Gigabit Ethernet for the Industrial Environment
With the advancement of computer and data transmission technologies, systems formerly reserved for the office environment are now critical components of the manufacturing floor. The demands of factory automation, in addition to computer hardware and software, have brought the wire and cable networking products that interconnect these technologies into the industrial setting as well.
With the vast differences between an office and an industrial environment, networking cables such as gigabit Ethernet have had to adapt to these harsh new surroundings, not only from a physical perspective but from a performance perspective as well, in order to function reliably.
This white paper discusses the constructional differences between standard Gigabit Ethernet and the specifications required for similar cables utilized in an industrial manufacturing environment. Additionally applications for these ruggedized designs are also reviewed.09/26/2012
A Comparison of WirelessHART and ISA100.11a
The technology advancements in measurement instruments and final control elements provide greater process insight, reduce engineering costs and contribute to improving the overall operational performance of the plant. These instruments are often collectively referred to as smart devices.09/04/2012
Top Five Missed Opportunities with HMI Alarms and Events
With any new tech device, whether a cell phone or plant-floor controller, there is inevitably a helpful feature or two you overlooked while reading the manual or taking the introductory tutorial. Although these technological devices still perform their desired, basic functions - discovering an underutilized feature makes you wonder how you ever operated the device without it.
Interacting with alarms is one of the basic functions your operators expect from their human-machine interface (HMI) software. However, if you're only using the standard alarming functions, you may be missing out on lesser-known features that could help you save time, ease troubleshooting and reduce headaches. The five FactoryTalk Alarms and Events functions listed below are often overlooked and underutilized. See where they fit and if you can find some hidden tools in your plant-floor applications.08/29/2012


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Arpin's Michigan Moving Companies can move you locally, across the state, and nationwide. Arpin Michigan Movers provide stress-free and secure moving services. Whether you are moving to or from Michigan, Arpin can provide complete moving services.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Air Force Airman Anthony Sanchez graduated from basic military training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in San Antonio, Texas.
The airman completed an intensive, eight-week program that included training in military discipline and studies, Air Force core values, physical fitness, and basic warfare principles and skills.
Airmen who complete basic training earn four credits toward an associate in applied science degree through the Community College of the Air Force.
Article Photos
Anthony Sanchez
Sanchez is the son of Tony Sanchez of Fort Myers and Anai Sanchez of Lehigh Acres.
He is a 2011 graduate of Evangelical Christian School in Fort Myers.


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- Colección
- 1966-2013
Contains the manuscripts of Williamson's music compositions and some recordings on CDs.
Williamson, John Ramsden (1929-2015), composer
23 resultados con objetos digitales Muestra los resultados con objetos digitales
Contains the manuscripts of Williamson's music compositions and some recordings on CDs.
Williamson, John Ramsden (1929-2015), composer
Letters sent by Charles Hallé (88 in total), chiefly to Stanley Withers and Gustav Behrens, and chiefly concerning the foundation of the Royal Manchester College of Music, particularly meetings for canvassing support and executive meetings. Other...
Hallé, Charles (1819-1895), Knight; pianist, conductor, founder of Royal Manchester College of Music
Correspondence, music, photographs and other items accumulated or created by members of the Carroll family - chiefly Walter and Ida Carroll, but also Elsa Carroll and Geoffrey Griffiths.
Carroll, Ida Gertrude (1905-1995), Officer of the Order of the British Empire, Principal of the Northern School of Music, double bass player
Manuscript scores by Harry James Wild, alumnus of the Royal Manchester College of Music. Some work is signed Hiram Wild.
Wild, Harry James (1928-1993), composer
Typescript copies of compositions by Mark Simpson (alumnus of JRNCM)
Simpson, Mark (1988-present), composer, clarinettist
Philip Jones Brass Ensemble: tour papers
Paperwork of tours, correspondence and finance.
Philip Jones Brass Ensemble (1951-1986), touring ensemble
Thomas Pitfield material collected by Canon Ridgway
Scores, letters and other papers mainly from Thomas Pitfield to Canon Ridgway. In the main the papers relate to Thomas Pitfield's morality play, 'Adam and the Creatures', which was published in 1968. It appears that Maurice Ridgwa...
Pitfield, Thomas Baron (1903-1999), Composer, artist
Arnold Cooke collection: additional material 2
MS of Wedding March written for the marriage of William and Beryl Cooke, 27 Jun 1936. William was Cooke's borther. Witten and played by Arnold Cooke on the wedding day.
Cooke, Arnold Atkinson (1906-2005), Composer
Arnold Cooke collection: additional material 1
This collection contains manuscript scores, lists of Cooke's works, biographies, obituaries and articles and correspondence to Peter Marr.
Cooke, Arnold Atkinson (1906-2005), Composer
MS works of Alan Rawsthorne including manuscripts of most of his published works. In addition there are manuscripts of many unpublished pieces, most from early in the composer's career. Rawsthorne composed symphonies, concerti, chamber music...
Rawsthorne, Alan (1905-1971), Composer


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T-Mobile is demanding that reader Motoko, a victim of fraud, immediately pay $1,100 before she can port her number to rival Sprint. Last month, Motoko discovered erroneous charges on her bill totaling $1,766; T-Mobile readily admitted that the charges were fraudulent, and told the BBB and Consumerist that Motoko would receive an immediate refund. Instead of a refund, T-Mobile sent Motoko's another bill and suspended her service. Now, almost a full month after T-Mobile's PR henchmen at Waggener Edstrom claimed that the company had provided a "satisfactory resolution," Motoko checked in with another update:
T-Mobile has only given me a partial amount of the credit they promised me in the BBB response. I've only gotten $454 back out of the $1,766. Their new response on the BBB website states that my October bill will reflect the full reimbursement of my credit. Unfortunately, the October bill is still $1,100+ and it shows that the second fraudulent line is still active.


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Biomoda Announces Collaborative Agreement with New Mexico Tech, Dec. 12, 2007
Contact: John Cousins (505) 821-0875
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., December 12, 2007 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Biomoda, Inc.of Albuquerque, NM, and New Mexico Tech reached an agreement today to collaborate on clinical studies and the development of specialized image recognition technology as part of the company's commercialization of its assay for the early detection of lung cancer.
New Mexico Tech, in Socorro, NM, is a world leader in many areas of research, including biomedical, hydrology, astrophysics, atmospheric physics, geophysics, homeland security, information technology, geosciences, energetic materials engineering, and petroleum recovery. The university specializes in research, focusing on science, engineering and related fields.
"This new research and development collaboration between Biomoda and New Mexico Tech will enable university researchers and students to directly participate in the testing and development of cutting-edge technology which will soon be deployed in the fight against cancer," said Daniel H. López, president of New Mexico Tech. "This new joint venture forged between a public university and a private business promises to be a win-win situation for all involved."
"I am particularly pleased to announce our partnership with such a strong research and engineering partner as New Mexico Tech as we move towards commercialization of Biomoda's early cancer diagnostic technology," said John Cousins, President of Biomoda. "The scientists at New Mexico Tech offer a wide range of expertise in biomedical and engineering research programs that will be applied immediately in development of engineering technology for image recognition that is targeted at broad-based screening of large populations for lung cancer."
Biomoda's patented technology, a non-invasive cytology based assay, is designed for cancer screening of large populations at a reasonable cost. Current diagnostic methods for lung cancer, including CT scans and X-rays, often detect the disease only at more advanced stages and are relatively expensive.
Lung cancer claims more lives than any other cancer. The expected 5-year survival rate for all patients combined in whom lung cancer is diagnosed is 15 percent and by contrast, the 5-year survival rate for cases detected when the disease is still localized is 50 percent. At the present time, only 16 percent of lung cancer cases are diagnosed at this early stage.
SOURCE Biomoda, Inc.


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We have now introduced our Affiliate scheme, with an introductory bonus of £10!You can now sign up to our Affiliate scheme through the Customer Centre. Upon doing so, you'll be given a unique link to put on your website or give to anyone when you recommend Invisional Hosting to them whilst obtaining a £10 introductory bonus. You'll be able to ... Lees verder »
Due to recent price increases by Nominet, and the removal of two year domain discount, we are now currently selling .uk domains at a loss.Unfortunately, as much as we would love to, we are unable to continue to provide the same .uk pricing in order to ensure we remain a sustainable business, providing the best service we can to you all.As a ... Lees verder »
Welcome to our fantastic new Customer Centre! We have now integrated both Invisional Hosting and Invisional Domains into the same control panel - you can how control everything from the same area, and we hope you find our new centre easy to use and nagivate.Some items may still be in our old Customer Centre (ccp.invisional.co.uk), and we'll be ... Lees verder »
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One Good Thing About the Recession, People Are Smarter Shoppers — Survey of the Day
The recession may have left unemployment rates a mess and killed the housing market, but if you're looking for a silver lining, here it is: we're all better shoppers now because of it.
According to Deloitte's 2011 Annual Pantry Survey, three-quarters of more than 4,000 respondents think they shop smarter than they did last year, with 86 percent saying they're now more precise about what they buy.
The reason behind this could have something to do with the internet — since 90 percent of the people surveyed said they know what they're going to buy before they even walk into a store, they're clearly doing research ahead of time.
Further, more than half of consumers know when the products they want will be on sale and time their buying excursions accordingly.
"Shoppers today expect to get a deal on the products they purchase," said Pat Conroy, vice chairman, Deloitte LLP and consumer products sector leader. "With this mindset it is critical that consumer products companies take measures to enhance brand loyalty by connecting early and often with key audiences in environments outside of the store."


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Iron Deficiency Symptoms
What are the symptoms of iron deficiency?
Medical Author:
Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD
Medical Editor: Charles P. Davis, MD, PhD
How can you tell if you have iron deficiency?
Because the signs and symptoms of iron deficiency (also termed anemia, iron deficiency anemia, sideropenia, and hypoferremia) can be very subtle, only a blood test can tell you for sure if your iron levels are too low. Anemia, which has several definitions, including a depletion of functioning red blood cells, can result from iron deficiency as well as other causes. However, some people with iron deficiency anemia have no recognizable symptoms at all. If the iron deficiency develops over a long time, causing an anemia that develops gradually, the body can adjust to the new state and you may not feel any symptoms.
On the other hand, if iron deficiency develops suddenly (such as the result of profound blood loss) the body has less time to compensate, and you may notice symptoms of iron deficiency listed below right away.
Even when symptoms of chronic, or long-term, iron deficiency are present, the symptoms are nonspecific and could be caused by a number of different problems.


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BRANDON — Brandon police are looking for the public's help in locating the person or persons who robbed a Brandon storeowner recently.
Police Chief Christopher Brickell said in a press release that a man entered Union Street Grocery at about 8 p.m. on Oct. 28 brandishing a weapon and demanding cash from the register. Storeowner Raj Mastaram was working alone behind the register when the incident took place, and there was one customer in the store at the time. Witnesses said two other customers entered the store as the robbery took place. There were no injuries.


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The inspiration that stood behind the new holiday makeup collection at Guerlain proves to be perfect for the ladies that want to adopt soft yet powerful, ultra-feminine makeup look as the deep red and Oriental pigments pack a high dose of elegance. Guerlain's holiday 2012 makeup collection was inspired by the brand's classic 1929 fragrance Liu, which was at the time inspired by the heroine of Puccini's opera, 'Turandot'. The opera tells a story of incredible passion and devotion, characteristics that Jacques Guerlain wanted the Liu fragrance... Read More


text: It is said that life does not measure the number of pleasures but their intensity. This is irrelevant at the Bareiss, where both the number and intensity of the pleasures are maximised. Such large choice, such quality, is only very seldom found at such a unique level. So enjoy it, our Culinary Day – from early in the morning until late at night.


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Charles Dickens, in full Charles John Huffam Dickens, (born February 7, 1812, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England—died June 9, 1870, Gad's Hill, near Chatham, Kent), English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian era. His many volumes include such works as A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend.
What did Charles Dickens write?
Why is Charles Dickens important?
What was Charles Dickens's early life like?
Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity during his lifetime than had any previous author. Much in his work could appeal to the simple and the sophisticated, to the poor and to the queen, and technological developments as well as the qualities of his work enabled his fame to spread worldwide very quickly. His long career saw fluctuations in the reception and sales of individual novels, but none of them was negligible or uncharacteristic or disregarded, and, though he is now admired for aspects and phases of his work that were given less weight by his contemporaries, his popularity has never ceased. The most abundantly comic of English authors, he was much more than a great entertainer. The range, compassion, and intelligence of his apprehension of his society and its shortcomings enriched his novels and made him both one of the great forces in 19th-century literature and an influential spokesman of the conscience of his age.
Early years
Dickens left Portsmouth in infancy. His happiest childhood years were spent in Chatham (1817–22), an area to which he often reverted in his fiction. From 1822 he lived in London, until, in 1860, he moved permanently to a country house, Gad's Hill, near Chatham. His origins were middle class, if of a newfound and precarious respectability; one grandfather had been a domestic servant, and the other an embezzler. His father, a clerk in the navy pay office, was well paid, but his extravagance and ineptitude often brought the family to financial embarrassment or disaster. (Some of his failings and his ebullience are dramatized in Mr. Micawber in the partly autobiographical David Copperfield.)
In 1824 the family reached bottom. Charles, the eldest son, had been withdrawn from school and was now set to manual work in a factory, and his father went to prison for debt. These shocks deeply affected Charles. Though abhorring this brief descent into the working class, he began to gain that sympathetic knowledge of its life and privations that informed his writings. Also, the images of the prison and of the lost, oppressed, or bewildered child recur in many novels. Much else in his character and art stemmed from this period, including, as the 20th-century novelist Angus Wilson has argued, his later difficulty, as man and author, in understanding women: this may be traced to his bitter resentment against his mother, who had, he felt, failed disastrously at this time to appreciate his sufferings. She had wanted him to stay at work when his father's release from prison and an improvement in the family's fortunes made the boy's return to school possible. Happily, the father's view prevailed.
His schooling, interrupted and unimpressive, ended at 15. He became a clerk in a solicitor's office, then a shorthand reporter in the lawcourts (thus gaining a knowledge of the legal world often used in the novels), and finally, like other members of his family, a parliamentary and newspaper reporter. These years left him with a lasting affection for journalism and contempt both for the law and for Parliament. His coming to manhood in the reformist 1830s, and particularly his working on the Liberal Benthamite Morning Chronicle (1834–36), greatly affected his political outlook. Another influential event now was his rejection as suitor to Maria Beadnell because his family and prospects were unsatisfactory; his hopes of gaining and chagrin at losing her sharpened his determination to succeed. His feelings about Beadnell then and at her later brief and disillusioning reentry into his life are reflected in David Copperfield's adoration of Dora Spenlow and in the middle-aged Arthur Clennam's discovery (in Little Dorrit) that Flora Finching, who had seemed enchanting years ago, was "diffuse and silly," that Flora, "whom he had left a lily, had become a peony."
Beginning of a literary career
Much drawn to the theatre, Dickens nearly became a professional actor in 1832. In 1833 he began contributing stories and descriptive essays to magazines and newspapers; these attracted attention and were reprinted as Sketches by "Boz" (February 1836). The same month, he was invited to provide a comic serial narrative to accompany engravings by a well-known artist; seven weeks later the first installment of The Pickwick Papers appeared. Within a few months Pickwick was the rage and Dickens the most popular author of the day. During 1836 he also wrote two plays and a pamphlet on a topical issue (how the poor should be allowed to enjoy the Sabbath) and, resigning from his newspaper job, undertook to edit a monthly magazine, Bentley's Miscellany, in which he serialized Oliver Twist (1837–39). Thus, he had two serial installments to write every month. Already the first of his nine surviving children had been born; he had married (in April 1836) Catherine, eldest daughter of a respected Scottish journalist and man of letters, George Hogarth.
For several years his life continued at this intensity. Finding serialization congenial and profitable, he repeated the Pickwick pattern of 20 monthly parts in Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39); then he experimented with shorter weekly installments for The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–41) and Barnaby Rudge (1841). Exhausted at last, he then took a five-month vacation in America, touring strenuously and receiving quasi-royal honours as a literary celebrity but offending national sensibilities by protesting against the absence of copyright protection. A radical critic of British institutions, he had expected more from "the republic of my imagination," but he found more vulgarity and sharp practice to detest than social arrangements to admire. Some of these feelings appear in American Notes (1842) and Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–44).
Novels from Pickwick to Chuzzlewit
His writing during these prolific years was remarkably various and, except for his plays, resourceful. Pickwick began as high-spirited farce and contained many conventional comic butts and traditional jokes; like other early works, it was manifestly indebted to the contemporary theatre, the 18th-century English novelists, and a few foreign classics, notably Don Quixote. But, besides giving new life to old stereotypes, Pickwick displayed, if sometimes in embryo, many of the features that were to be blended in varying proportions throughout his fiction: attacks, satirical or denunciatory, on social evils and inadequate institutions; topical references; an encyclopaedic knowledge of London (always his predominant fictional locale); pathos; a vein of the macabre; a delight in the demotic joys of Christmas; a pervasive spirit of benevolence and geniality; inexhaustible powers of character creation; a wonderful ear for characteristic speech, often imaginatively heightened; a strong narrative impulse; and a prose style that, if here overdependent on a few comic mannerisms, was highly individual and inventive. Rapidly improvised and written only weeks or days ahead of its serial publication, Pickwick contains weak and jejune passages and is an unsatisfactory whole—partly because Dickens was rapidly developing his craft as a novelist while writing and publishing it. What is remarkable is that a first novel, written in such circumstances, not only established him overnight and created a new tradition of popular literature but also survived, despite its crudities, as one of the best-known novels in the world.
His self-assurance and artistic ambitiousness appeared in Oliver Twist, where he rejected the temptation to repeat the successful Pickwick formula. Though containing much comedy still, Oliver Twist is more centrally concerned with social and moral evil (the workhouse and the criminal world); it culminates in Bill Sikes's murdering Nancy and Fagin's last night in the condemned cell at Newgate. The latter episode was memorably depicted in an engraving by George Cruikshank; the imaginative potency of Dickens's characters and settings owes much, indeed, to his original illustrators (Cruikshank for Sketches by "Boz" and Oliver Twist, "Phiz" [Hablot K. Browne] for most of the other novels until the 1860s). The currency of his fiction owed much, too, to its being so easy to adapt into effective stage versions. Sometimes 20 London theatres simultaneously were producing adaptations of his latest story, so even nonreaders became acquainted with simplified versions of his works. The theatre was often a subject of his fiction, too, as in the Crummles troupe in Nicholas Nickleby. This novel reverted to the Pickwick shape and atmosphere, though the indictment of the brutal Yorkshire schools (Dotheboys Hall) continued the important innovation in English fiction seen in Oliver Twist—the spectacle of the lost or oppressed child as an occasion for pathos and social criticism. This was amplified in The Old Curiosity Shop, where the death of Little Nell was found overwhelmingly powerful at the time, though a few decades later it became a byword for what would be referred to, broadly, as "Victorian sentimentality." In Barnaby Rudge he attempted another genre, the historical novel. Like his later attempt in this kind, A Tale of Two Cities, it was set in the late 18th century and presented with great vigour and understanding (and some ambivalence of attitude) the spectacle of large-scale mob violence.
To create an artistic unity out of the wide range of moods and materials included in every novel, with often several complicated plots involving scores of characters, was made even more difficult by Dickens's writing and publishing them serially. In Martin Chuzzlewit he tried "to resist the temptation of the current Monthly Number, and to keep a steadier eye upon the general purpose and design" (1844 Preface). Its American episodes had, however, been unpremeditated (he suddenly decided to boost the disappointing sales by some America-baiting and to revenge himself against insults and injuries from the American press). A concentration on "the general purpose and design" was more effective in the next novel, Dombey and Son (1846–48), though the experience of writing the shorter, and unserialized, Christmas books had helped him obtain greater coherence.
The invention of the Christmas books
A Christmas Carol, suddenly conceived and written in a few weeks in late 1843, was the first of these Christmas books (a new literary genre thus created incidentally). Tossed off while he was amply engaged in writing Chuzzlewit, it was an extraordinary achievement—the one great Christmas myth of modern literature. His view of life was later to be described or dismissed as "Christmas philosophy," and he himself spoke of "Carol philosophy" as the basis of a projected work. His "philosophy," never very elaborated, involved more than wanting the Christmas spirit to prevail throughout the year, but his great attachment to Christmas (in his family life as well as his writings) is indeed significant and has contributed to his popularity. "Dickens dead?" exclaimed a London costermonger's girl in 1870. "Then will Father Christmas die too?"—a tribute both to his association with Christmas and to the mythological status of the man as well as of his work. The Carol immediately entered the general consciousness; William Makepeace Thackeray, in a contemporary review, called it "a national benefit, and to every man and woman who reads it a personal kindness." Further Christmas books, essays, and stories followed annually (except in 1847) through 1867. None equalled the Carol in potency, though some achieved great immediate popularity. Cumulatively they represent a celebration of Christmas attempted by no other great author.
The product of his age
How he struck his contemporaries in these early years appears in R.H. Horne's New Spirit of the Age (1844). Dickens occupied the first and longest chapter, as
manifestly the product of his age…a genuine emanation from its aggregate and entire spirit.…He mixes extensively in society, and continually. Few public meetings in a benevolent cause are without him. He speaks effectively.…His influence upon his age is extensive—pleasurable, instructive, healthy, reformatory.…
Mr. Dickens is, in private, very much what might be expected from his works.…His conversation is genial.…[He] has singular personal activity, and is fond of games of practical skill. He is also a great walker, and very much given to dancing Sir Roger de Coverley. In private, the general impression of him is that of a first-rate practical intellect, with "no nonsense" about him.
He was indeed very much a public figure, actively and centrally involved in his world, and a man of confident presence. He was reckoned the best after-dinner speaker of the age; other superlatives he attracted included his having been the best shorthand reporter on the London press and his being the best amateur actor on the stage. Later he became one of the most successful periodical editors and the finest dramatic recitalist of the day. He was splendidly endowed with many skills. "Even irrespective of his literary genius," wrote an obituarist, "he was an able and strong-minded man, who would have succeeded in almost any profession to which he devoted himself " (Times, June 10, 1870). Few of his extraliterary skills and interests were irrelevant to the range and mode of his fiction.
Privately in these early years, he was both domestic and social. He loved home and family life and was a proud and efficient householder; he once contemplated writing a cookbook. To his many children, he was a devoted and delightful father, at least while they were young; relations with them proved less happy during their adolescence. Apart from periods in Italy (1844–45) and Switzerland and France (1846–47), he still lived in London, moving from an apartment in Furnival's Inn to larger houses as his income and family grew. Here he entertained his many friends, most of them popular authors, journalists, actors, or artists, though some came from the law and other professions or from commerce and a few from the aristocracy. Some friendships dating from his youth endured to the end, and, though often exasperated by the financial demands of his parents and other relatives, he was very fond of some of his family and loyal to most of the rest. Some literary squabbles came later, but he was on friendly terms with most of his fellow authors, of the older generation as well as his own. Necessarily solitary while writing and during the long walks (especially through the streets at night) that became essential to his creative processes, he was generally social at other times. He enjoyed society that was unpretentious and conversation that was genial and sensible but not too intellectualized or exclusively literary. High society he generally avoided, after a few early incursions into the great houses; he hated to be lionized or patronized.
He had about him "a sort of swell and overflow as of a prodigality of life," an American journalist said. Everyone was struck by the brilliance of his eyes and his smart, even dandyish, appearance ("I have the fondness of a savage for finery," he confessed). John Forster, his intimate friend and future biographer, recalled him at the Pickwick period:
The quickness, keenness, and practical power, the eager, restless, energetic outlook on each several feature [of his face] seemed to tell so little of a student or writer of books, and so much of a man of action and business in the world. Light and motion flashed from every part of it.
He was proud of his art and devoted to improving it and using it to good ends (his works would show, he wrote, that "Cheap Literature is not behind-hand with the Age, but holds its place, and strives to do its duty"), but his art never engaged all his formidable energies. He had no desire to be narrowly literary.
A notable, though unsuccessful, demonstration of this was his being founder-editor in 1846 of the Daily News (soon to become the leading Liberal newspaper). His journalistic origins, his political convictions and readiness to act as a leader of opinion, and his wish to secure a steady income independent of his literary creativity and of any shifts in novel readers' tastes made him attempt or plan several periodical ventures in the 1840s. The return to daily journalism soon proved a mistake—the biggest fiasco in a career that included few such misdirections or failures. A more limited but happier exercise of his practical talents began soon afterward: for more than a decade he directed, energetically and with great insight and compassion, a reformatory home for young female delinquents, financed by his wealthy friend Angela Burdett-Coutts. The benevolent spirit apparent in his writings often found practical expression in his public speeches, fund-raising activities, and private acts of charity.
Dombey and Copperfield
Dombey and Son (1846–48) was a crucial novel in his development, a product of more thorough planning and maturer thought and the first in which "a pervasive uneasiness about contemporary society takes the place of an intermittent concern with specific social wrongs," as the scholar Kathleen Tillotson observed. Using railways prominently and effectively, it was very up-to-date, though the questions posed included such perennial moral and religious challenges as are suggested by the child Paul's first words in the story: "Papa, what's money?" Some of the corruptions of money and pride of place and the limitations of "respectable" values are explored, virtue and human decency being discovered most often (as elsewhere in Dickens) among the poor, humble, and simple. In Paul's early death Dickens offered another famous pathetic episode; in Mr. Dombey he made a more ambitious attempt than before at serious and internal characterization.
David Copperfield (1849–50) has been described as a "holiday" from these larger social concerns and most notable for its childhood chapters, which the critic Edmund Wilson described as "an enchanting vein which he had never quite found before and which he was never to find again." Largely for this reason and for its autobiographical interest, it has always been among his most popular novels and was Dickens's own "favourite child." It incorporates material from the autobiography he had recently begun but soon abandoned and was written in the first person, a new technique for him. David differs from his creator in many ways, however, though Dickens used many early experiences that had meant much to him—his period of work in the factory while his father was jailed, his schooling and reading, his passion for Maria Beadnell, and (more cursorily) his emergence from parliamentary reporting into successful novel writing. In Micawber the novel presents one of the "Dickens characters" whose imaginative potency extends far beyond the narratives in which they figure; Pickwick and Sam Weller, Mrs. Gamp and Mr. Pecksniff, and Scrooge are some others.
Middle years
Dickens's journalistic ambitions at last found a permanent form in Household Words (1850–59) and its successor, All the Year Round (1859–88). Popular weekly miscellanies of fiction, poetry, and essays on a wide range of topics, these had substantial and increasing circulations, reaching 300,000 for some of the Christmas numbers. Dickens contributed some serials—the lamentable Child's History of England (1851–53), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1860–61)—and essays, some of which were collected in Reprinted Pieces (1858) and The Uncommercial Traveller (1861, later amplified). Particularly in 1850–52 and during the Crimean War, he contributed many items on current political and social affairs; in later years he wrote less—much less on politics—and the magazine was less political, too. Other distinguished novelists contributed serials, including Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, and Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. The poetry was uniformly feeble; Dickens was imperceptive here. The reportage, often solidly based, was bright (sometimes painfully so) in manner. His conduct of these weeklies showed his many skills as editor and journalist but also some limitations in his tastes and intellectual ambitions. The contents are revealing in relation to his novels: he took responsibility for all the opinions expressed (for articles were anonymous) and selected and amended contributions accordingly; thus, comments on topical events and so on may generally be taken as representing his opinions, whether or not he wrote them. No English author of comparable status has devoted 20 years of his maturity to such unremitting editorial work, and the weeklies' success was due not only to his illustrious name but also to his practical sagacity and sustained industry. Even in his creative work, as his eldest son said,
No city clerk was ever more methodical or orderly than he; no humdrum, monotonous, conventional task could ever have been discharged with more punctuality, or with more businesslike regularity.
Novels from Bleak House to Little Dorrit
The novels of these years, Bleak House (1852–53), Hard Times (1854), and Little Dorrit (1855–57), were much "darker" than their predecessors. Presenting a remarkably inclusive and increasingly sombre picture of contemporary society, they were inevitably often seen at the time as fictionalized propaganda about ephemeral issues. They are much more than this, though it is never easy to state how Dickens's imagination transformed their many topicalities into an artistically coherent vision that transcends their immediate historical context. Similar questions are raised by his often basing fictional characters, places, and institutions on actual originals. He once spoke of his mind's taking "a fanciful photograph" of a scene, and there is a continual interplay between photographic realism and "fancy" (or imagination). As Walter Bagehot noted, in 1858, Dickens "describes London like a special correspondent for posterity," and posterity has certainly found in his fiction the response of an acute, knowledgeable, and concerned observer to the social and political developments of "the moving age."
In the novels of the 1850s, he was politically more despondent, emotionally more tragic. The satire is harsher, the humour less genial and abundant, the "happy endings" more subdued than in the early fiction. Technically, the later novels are more coherent, plots being more fully related to themes, and themes being often expressed through a more insistent use of imagery and symbols (grim symbols, too, such as the fog in Bleak House or the prison in Little Dorrit). His art here is more akin to poetry than to what is suggested by the photographic or journalistic comparisons. "Dickensian" characterization continues in the sharply defined and simplified grotesque or comic figures, such as Chadband in Bleak House or Mrs. Sparsit in Hard Times, but large-scale figures of this type are less frequent (the Gamps and Micawbers belong to the first half of his career). Characterization also has become more subordinate to "the general purpose and design"; moreover, Dickens was presenting characters of greater complexity who provoke more complex responses in the reader (William Dorrit, for instance). Even the juvenile leads, who had usually been thinly conceived conventional figures, are now often more complicated in their makeup and less easily rewarded by good fortune. With his secular hopes diminishing, Dickens became more concerned with "the great final secret of all life"—a phrase from Little Dorrit, where the spiritual dimension of his work is most overt. Critics disagree as to how far so worldly a novelist succeeded artistically in enlarging his view to include the religious. These novels, too, being manifestly an ambitious attempt to explore the prospects of humanity at this time, raise questions, still much debated, about the intelligence and profundity of his understanding of society.
Marital unhappiness: Catherine Dickens and Ellen Ternan
Dickens's spirits and confidence in the future had indeed declined: 1855 was "a year of much unsettled discontent for him," his friend John Forster recalled, partly for political reasons (or, as Forster hints, his political indignation was exacerbated by a "discontent" that had personal origins). The Crimean War, besides exposing governmental inefficiency, was distracting attention from the "poverty, hunger, and ignorant desperation" at home. In Little Dorrit, "I have been blowing off a little of indignant steam which would otherwise blow me up…," Dickens wrote, "but I have no present political faith or hope—not a grain." Not only were the present government and Parliament contemptible, but "representative government is become altogether a failure with us,…the whole thing has broken down…and has no hope in it." Nor had he a coherent alternative to suggest. This desperation coincided with an acute state of personal unhappiness. The brief tragicomedy of Maria Beadnell's reentry into his life, in 1855, finally destroyed one nostalgic illusion and also betrayed a perilous emotional immaturity and hunger. He now openly identified himself with some of the sorrows dramatized in the adult David Copperfield:
Why is it, that as with poor David, a sense comes always crushing on me, now, when I fall into low spirits, as of one happiness I have missed in life, and one friend and companion I have never made?
This comes from the correspondence with Forster in 1854–55, which contains the first admissions of his marital unhappiness; by 1856 he was writing, "I find the skeleton in my domestic closet is becoming a pretty big one"; by 1857–58, as Forster remarked, an "unsettled feeling" had become almost habitual with him, "and the satisfactions which home should have supplied, and which indeed were essential requirements of his nature, he had failed to find in his home." From May 1858, Catherine Dickens lived apart from him. A painful scandal arose, and Dickens did not act at this time with tact, patience, or consideration. The affair disrupted some of his friendships and narrowed his social circle, but surprisingly it seems not to have damaged his popularity with the public.
Catherine Dickens maintained a dignified silence, and most of Dickens's family and friends, including his official biographer, Forster, were discreetly reticent about the separation. Not until 1939 did one of his children (Katey), speaking posthumously through conversations recorded by a friend, offer a candid inside account. It was discreditable to him, and his self-justifying letters must be viewed with caution. He there dated the unhappiness of his marriage back to 1838, attributed to his wife various "peculiarities" of temperament (including her sometimes labouring under "a mental disorder"), emphatically agreed with her (alleged) statement that "she felt herself unfit for the life she had to lead as my wife," and maintained that she never cared for the children nor they for her. In more temperate letters, where he acknowledged her "amiable and complying" qualities, he simply and more acceptably asserted that their temperaments were utterly incompatible. She was, apparently, pleasant but rather limited; such faults as she had were rather negative than positive, though family tradition from a household that knew the Dickenses well speaks of her as "a whiney woman" and as having little understanding of, or patience with, the artistic temperament.
Dickens's self-justifying letters lack candour in omitting to mention Ellen Ternan, an actress 27 years his junior, his passion for whom had precipitated the separation. Two months earlier he had written more frankly to an intimate friend:
The domestic unhappiness remains so strong upon me that I can't write, and (waking) can't rest, one minute. I have never known a moment's peace or content, since the last night of The Frozen Deep.
The Frozen Deep was a play in which he and Nelly (as Ellen was called) had performed together in August 1857. Ternan, of an old theatrical family, was 18 at the time; reports speak of her as intelligent and having "a pretty face and well-developed figure"—or "passably pretty and not much of an actress." She left the stage in 1860; after Dickens's death she married a clergyman and helped him run a school. The affair was hushed up until the 1930s, and evidence about it remains scanty, but every addition confirms that Dickens was deeply attached to her and that their relationship lasted until his death. It seems likely that she became his mistress, though probably not until the 1860s; assertions that Ternan gave birth to a child remain unproved, though Claire Tomalin, in biographies of Ternan and Dickens, has argued persuasively that she did. Similarly, suggestions that the anguish experienced by some of the lovers in the later novels may reflect Dickens's own feelings remain speculative. It is tempting, indeed, to associate Ternan with some of their heroines (who are more spirited and complex, less of the "legless angel," than most of their predecessors), especially as her given names, Ellen Lawless, seem to be echoed by those of heroines in the three final novels—Estella, Bella, and Helena Landless—but nothing definite is known about how she responded to Dickens, what she felt for him at the time, or how close any of these later love stories were to aspects or phases of their relationship, not least because no correspondence between Ternan and Dickens is known to have survived.
The eventual disclosure of this episode caused surprise, shock, or piquant satisfaction, being related of a man whose rebelliousness against his society had seemed to take only impeccably reformist shapes. A critic in 1851, listing the reasons for his unique popularity, had cited "above all, his deep reverence for the household sanctities, his enthusiastic worship of the household gods." After these disclosures he was, disconcertingly or intriguingly, a more complex man, and, partly as a consequence, Dickens the novelist also began to be seen as more complex, less conventional, than had been realized.
Public readings
As the scholar Kathleen Tillotson observed of Dickens: "His lifelong love-affair with his reading public, when all is said, is by far the most interesting love-affair of his life." This took a new form, about the time of Dickens's separation from his wife, in his giving public readings from his works, and it is significant that, when trying to justify this enterprise as certain to succeed, he referred to "that particular relation (personally affectionate and like no other man's) which subsists between me and the public." The remark suggests how much Dickens valued his public's affection, not only as a stimulus to his creativity and a condition for his commercial success but also as a substitute for the love he could not find at home. He had been toying with the idea of turning paid reader since 1853, when he began giving occasional readings in aid of charity. The paid series began in April 1858, the immediate impulse being to find some energetic distraction from his marital unhappiness. But the readings drew on more permanent elements in him and his art: his remarkable histrionic talents, his love of theatricals and of seeing and delighting an audience, and the eminently performable nature of his fiction. Moreover, he could earn more by reading than by writing, and more certainly; it was easier to force himself to repeat a performance than create a book.
His initial repertoire consisted entirely of Christmas books but was soon amplified by episodes from the novels and magazine Christmas stories. A performance usually consisted of two items; of the 16 eventually performed, the most popular were "The Trial from Pickwick" and the Carol. Comedy predominated, though pathos was important in the repertoire, and horrifics were startlingly introduced in the last reading he devised, "Sikes and Nancy," derived from Oliver Twist, with which he petrified his audiences and half killed himself. Intermittently, until shortly before his death, he gave seasons of readings in London and embarked upon hardworking tours through the provinces and (in 1867–68) the United States. Altogether he performed about 471 times.
He was a magnificent performer, and important elements in his art—the oral and dramatic qualities—were demonstrated in these renderings. His insight and skill revealed nuances in the narration and characterization that few readers had noticed. Necessarily, such extracts or short stories, suitable for a two-hour entertainment, excluded some of his larger and deeper effects—notably, his social criticism and analysis—and his later novels were underrepresented. Dickens never mentioned these inadequacies. He manifestly enjoyed the experience until, near the end, he was becoming ill and exhausted. He was writing much less in the 1860s. It is debatable how far this was because the readings exhausted his energies while providing the income, creative satisfaction, and continuous contact with an audience that he had formerly obtained through the novels. He gloried in his audiences' admiration and love. Some friends thought this too crude a gratification, too easy a triumph, and a sad declension into a lesser and ephemeral art. In whatever way the episode is judged, it was characteristic of him—of his relationship with his public, his business sense, his stamina, his ostentatious display of supplementary skills, and also of his originality. The only comparable figure is his contemporary, Mark Twain, who acknowledged Dickens as the pioneer.
Last years
Final novels: A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend
Tired and ailing though he was, Dickens remained inventive and adventurous in his final novels. A Tale of Two Cities (1859) was an experiment, relying less than before on characterization, dialogue, and humour. An exciting and compact narrative, it lacks too many of his strengths to count among his major works. Sydney Carton's self-sacrifice was found deeply moving by Dickens and by many readers; Dr. Manette now seems a more impressive achievement in serious characterization. The French Revolution scenes are vivid, if superficial in historical understanding. Great Expectations (1860–61) resembles David Copperfield in being a first-person narration and in drawing on parts of Dickens's personality and experience. Compact like its predecessor, it lacks the panoramic inclusiveness of Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Our Mutual Friend, but, though not his most ambitious, it is his most finely achieved novel. The hero Pip's mind is explored with great subtlety, and his development through a childhood and youth beset with hard tests of character is traced critically but sympathetically. Various "great expectations" in the book prove ill founded—a comment as much on the values of the age as on the characters' weaknesses and misfortunes. Our Mutual Friend (1864–65), Dickens's final completed novel, continues this critique of monetary and class values. London is now grimmer than ever before, and the corruption, complacency, and superficiality of "respectable" society are fiercely attacked. Many new elements are introduced into Dickens's fictional world, which renders the novel a large and inclusive one, but his handling of the old comic-eccentrics (such as Boffin, Wegg, and Venus) is sometimes tiresomely mechanical.
How the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) would have developed is uncertain. Here again Dickens left panoramic fiction to concentrate on a limited private action. The central figure was evidently to be John Jasper, whose eminent respectability as a cathedral organist was in extreme contrast to his haunting low opium dens and, out of violent sexual jealousy, murdering his nephew. It would have been his most elaborate treatment of the themes of crime, evil, and psychological abnormality that recur throughout his novels; a great celebrator of life, he was also obsessed with death.
How greatly Dickens personally had changed in his final years appears in remarks by friends who met him again, after many years, during the American reading tour in 1867–68. "I sometimes think…," wrote one, "I must have known two individuals bearing the same name, at various periods of my own life." But just as the fiction, despite many developments, still contained many stylistic and narrative features continuous with the earlier work, so, too, the man remained a "human hurricane," though he had aged considerably, his health had deteriorated, and his nerves had been jangled by travelling ever since his being in a railway accident in 1865. Other Americans noted that, though grizzled, he was "as quick and elastic in his movements as ever." His photographs, wrote a journalist after one of the readings, "give no idea of his genial expression. To us he appears like a hearty, companionable man, with a deal of fun in him." But that very day Dickens was writing, "I am nearly used up," and listing the afflictions now "telling heavily upon me." His pride and the old-trouper tradition made him conceal his sufferings. And, if sometimes by an effort of will, his old high spirits were often on display. "The cheerfullest man of his age," he was called by his American publisher, J.T. Fields; Fields's wife more perceptively noted, "Wonderful, the flow of spirits C.D. has for a sad man."
His fame remained undiminished, though critical opinion was increasingly hostile to him. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, noting the immense enthusiasm for him during the American tour, remarked: "One can hardly take in the whole truth about it, and feel the universality of his fame." But in many respects he was "a sad man" in these later years. He never was tranquil or relaxed. Various old friends were now estranged or dead or for other reasons less available; he was now leading a less social life and spending more time with young friends of a calibre inferior to his former circle. His sons were causing much worry and disappointment; "all his fame goes for nothing," said a friend, "since he has not the one thing. He is very unhappy in his children." His life was not all dreary, however. He loved his country house, Gad's Hill, and he could still "warm the social atmosphere wherever he appeared with that summer glow which seemed to attend him." T.A. Trollope (contributor to Dickens's All the Year Round and brother of the novelist Anthony Trollope), who wrote that, despaired of giving people who had not met him any idea of
the general charm of his manner.…His laugh was brimful of enjoyment.…His enthusiasm was boundless.…He was a hearty man, a large-hearted man,…a strikingly manly man.
Farewell readings
His health remained precarious after the punishing American tour and was further impaired by his addiction to giving the strenuous "Sikes and Nancy" reading. His farewell reading tour was abandoned when, in April 1869, he collapsed. He began writing another novel and gave a short farewell season of readings in London, ending with the famous speech, "From these garish lights I vanish now for evermore…"—words repeated, less than three months later, on his funeral card. He died suddenly in June 1870 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Critical opinion and scholarship
Ralph Waldo Emerson, attending one of Dickens's readings in Boston, "laughed as if he must crumble to pieces," but, discussing Dickens afterward, he said:
I am afraid he has too much talent for his genius; it is a fearful locomotive to which he is bound and can never be free from it nor set to rest.…He daunts me! I have not the key.
There is no simple key to so prolific and multifarious an artist nor to the complexities of the man, and interpretation of both is made harder by his possessing and feeling the need to exercise so many talents besides his imagination. How his fiction is related to these talents—practical, journalistic, oratorical, histrionic—remains controversial. Also, the geniality and unequalled comedy of the novels must be related to the sufferings, errors, and self-pity of their author and to his concern both for social evils and for the perennial griefs and limitations of humanity. The novels cover a wide range, social, moral, emotional, and psychological. Thus, he is much concerned with very ordinary people but also with abnormality (e.g., eccentricity, depravity, madness, hallucinations, dream states). He is both the most imaginative and fantastic and the most topical and documentary of great novelists—certainly of the Victorian era, perhaps of all time. He is unequal, too; a wonderfully inventive and poetic writer, he can also, even in his mature novels, write with a painfully slack conventionality.
Biographers have only since the mid-20th century explored the complexity of Dickens's nature. Critics have always been challenged by his art, though from the start it contained enough easily acceptable ingredients, evident skill and gusto, to ensure popularity. The earlier novels—The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Martin Chuzzlewit, A Christmas Carol, and David Copperfield—were Dickens's most popular works, and, by and large, they remained so throughout the 20th century. During Dickens's lifetime, critics began to demur against the later novels, deploring the loss of the freer comic spirit, baffled by the more symbolic mode of his art, and uneasy when the simpler reformism over isolated issues became a more radical questioning of social assumptions and institutions. Dickens was not neglected or forgotten and never lost his popularity, but for 70 years after his death he received remarkably little serious attention (George Gissing, G.K. Chesterton, and George Bernard Shaw being notable exceptions). F.R. Leavis, later to revise his opinion, was speaking for many, in 1948, when he asserted that "the adult mind doesn't as a rule find in Dickens a challenge to an unusual and sustained seriousness"; Dickens was indeed a great genius, "but the genius was that of a great entertainer."
What can be labeled "modern" Dickens criticism dates from 1940–41, with the very different impulses given by George Orwell, Edmund Wilson, and Humphry House. In the 1950s, a substantial reassessment and re-editing of the works began, and critics found his finest artistry and greatest depth to be in the later novels: Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Great Expectations—and (less unanimously) in Hard Times and Our Mutual Friend. During the second half of the 20th century, scholars explored his working methods, his relations with his public, and the ways in which he was simultaneously an eminently Victorian figure and an author "not of an age but for all time." Biographically, aside from his relationship with Ellen Ternan, little had been added to John Forster's massive and intelligent Life (1872–74) until Edgar Johnson's Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph was published in 1952. The centenary in 1970 of Dickens's death demonstrated a critical consensus about his standing second only to William Shakespeare in English literature, which would have seemed incredible 40 or even 20 years earlier. At the turn of the 21st century, Dickens remained a compelling figure for biographers, scholars, television and film producers, and everyday readers.Philip Collins The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
history of Europe: Early 19th-century social and political thoughtDickens, a passionate humanitarian, stirred the masses with his examples of the law's stupid cruelty, but he proposed no agency of betterment, content to despise Parliament, the law courts, and the complacency of the wealthy. Balzac wrote his huge array of novels as a "social…
history of Europe: Literature…marked change of tone in Dickens' novels that occurs between
David Copperfield(1850) and Bleak House(1853). The temper expressed in most concentrated form the very next year in Hard Timesnow dominates Dickens' mind and works to the end: life is a dreary sort of underworld; happy endings are…
English literature: DickensCharles Dickens first attracted attention with the descriptive essays and tales originally written for newspapers, beginning in 1833, and collected as
Sketches by "Boz"(1836). On the strength of this volume, Dickens contracted to write a historical novel in the tradition of Scott (eventually published…
novel: PropagandaThe
Nicholas Nickleby(1839) of Charles Dickens attacked the abuses of schools to some purpose, as his Oliver Twist(1838) drew attention to the horrors of poorhouses and his Bleak House(1853) to the abuses of the law of chancery. The weakness of propaganda in fiction is that it loses…
modernization: The dual revolution…from such English novelists as Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell. But it was left to others, from societies only just beginning to industrialize, to blend these artistic impressions (many of them not at all celebratory) into a systematic analysis of the new society. Foreigners such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Friedrich…
More About Charles Dickens96 references found in Britannica articles
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You might wonder where to tie up the horse and hang your Stetson at this Surry Hills newbie as the fit out is more western saloon than Italian Stallion, but the The Flinders/Norfolk/Carrington boys know how to mix things up.
Red tiled high tables, rattan ceiling, wagon wheel chandeliers and quirky wall hangings have created a new watering hole worth rounding up the herd for.
Things turn Italiano when you peruse the menu – look out Sydney's best pizza joints, The Forresters is a serious contender.
Choose flame licked 'White' bases like speck and fontina, or nduja (a Calabrian spicy spreadable sausage) with mashed potato and tallegio cheese. Or go 'Red' with prosciutto, pineapple and jalapeno or splash out on 'Pay Day Pizza' with lobster, truffle and truffled salami.
The fun and surprises rock-on with snacks of spicy deep fried cauliflower, oozing stringy smoked mozzarella arancini and addictive 'Poppers' of deep fried red pepper stuffed with pork and sage. For the hungrier lot, there's an open flame rotisserie charring everything from chicken and beef to duck and goat. This stuff is finger lickin, buddy bonding fodder.
The bar staff whip up a mean cocktail – 'Idiots Delight' anyone? – while the beer and wine list is a good mix of Occa and Nonna's favourites.
So don't hold your horses, get on one, and gallop down for $3 pizza slices on Wednesdays.
The Forresters
336 Riley Street (cnr Foveaux Street), Surry Hills 2010
Open seven days; Monday – Wednesday, 12pm to 12am; Thursday – Saturday, 12pm – 1am; Sunday 12pm – 10pm. Food served til 10pm daily.


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The words engineering and sports aren't usually used in the same sentence, and the two activities usually don't happen in the same room. But they were, and they did, last week at the DARPA Spectrum Challenge, held at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency headquarters in Arlington, Va.
The goal of the contest, the first ever DARPA challenge on the use of spectrum, was to demonstrate how a software-defined radio can use a given communication channel in the presence of other users and interfering signals. Over the course of two days, normally taciturn techies oohed, aahed, and cheered as 18 teams competed in a series of head-to-head matches to see who had the best algorithms.
A nearly yearlong process winnowed an initial field of 90 teams down to the 18 that competed last month. While most of the teams were composed of academics, there were also amateur hobbyists, including a medical doctor whose second love is electronics and a 28-year-old contract programmer with no formal education beyond high school.
The challenge was actually two separate competitions. In one tournament, two teams in each match competed to send and receive 15 000 packets on a 5-megahertz-wide channel centered at 600 MHz within the UHF band. This was an adversarial contest, where one team was allowed, even encouraged, to try to interfere with the other team's broadcast. This type of adaptive radio technology is appropriate for military applications—on a battlefield, for example—where the enemy is trying to jam transmissions. In this contest, the first team to successfully transmit and receive all their packets won and moved on to the next round. A team called Efficient Spectrum—made up of two engineers employed at a large defense contractor but competing as individuals—won this tournament and its US $50 000 grand prize. Team GTRI, a group of research faculty members from the Georgia Tech Research Institute, came in second place and won $25 000.
In the other tournament, three teams per match were judged on how well their algorithms shared spectrum. This type of technology is more germane to commercial applications in unlicensed bands, where there is no prior coordination or even definitive rules. In particular, this is how companies hope to use the unlicensed TV white spaces freed up by the Federal Communications Commission. In these matches, the team that transmitted the most packets won, but it also got the number of packets transmitted by the second-highest scorer added to its total, which helped it in later rounds. This was intended to encourage cooperation, because a win depended not only on how many packets a team successfully sent and received but also on how successful the other teams were. A team made up of an assistant professor and an undergraduate from Tennessee Technological University won this competition, receiving $50 000, with Efficient Spectrum placing second for a $25 000 prize.
The running of the algorithms and broadcasting of the signals was performed remotely, at the Open-Access Research Testbed for Next-Generation Wireless Networks, known as Orbit, a radio research lab at Rutgers University, in Piscataway, N.J. That ensured that the algorithms were run independently, using the same hardware, so the software could be judged clearly on its own merits.
For each match, the Orbit staff programmed the system with the teams' algorithms, and the race was on. A display of each team's signals was live-streamed to the audience at DARPA, which lent the competition a spectator-sport atmosphere. At the top of the display were spectrograms showing the frequencies over which each team's source and destination nodes were transmitting. In real time, the teams and audience watched as one team or another pulled ahead or, in a couple of instances, didn't even make it out of the gate.
Yiftach Eisenberg, program manager of DARPA's Information Innovation Office and organizer of the challenge, provided a play-by-play for each match, commenting on how each team was doing, noting when a team was pulling ahead, and explaining what some of the waveforms indicated. In the adversarial tournament, some teams actively tried to interfere with the others' signals, but that approach wasn't as prevalent as it was in the preliminary competition, held last September, when the propensity for interference was so high that sometimes neither team was able to transmit or receive anything. As a consequence, DARPA made some adjustments to reduce the interference levels, says Eisenberg.
Eisenberg notes that many of the teams had dramatically improved their designs since September. "I'm amazed at how much innovation took place between the preliminary tournament and this one," he says. Specifically, in September teams used designs without feedback loops, spectrum sensing, or adaptation. "Today, what we saw was that many of the teams made this huge leap to radios that can sense and adapt their transmissions in real time."
The final competition proved "that spectrum sharing among peers is feasible. We can take different systems in a complex environment, and they can share the spectrum without human intervention and spectrum preplanning," says Eisenberg.
Among the most valuable lessons of the competition were the things that didn't work. "We saw the unintended consequences and unexpected behaviors when you put these adaptive systems together," he says. In one match, for example, one team started its transmission by displaying its logo in the spectrogram, which somehow prevented its competitor from registering its program and starting transmission. That was a surprise to both teams and to Eisenberg. "These are the kinds of things none of us could have ever predicted or tested for," he says. "This is what happens in real life, when dynamic complex systems are thrown into dynamic complex environments."
About the Author
Tam Harbert is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C., who specializes in technology and business. Her November 2013 IEEE Spectrum feature on artificial intelligence for patent law won an American Society of Journalists and Authors Periodicals writing award.


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- AltCar Auto Show
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Auto Show: 2013 La Auto Show
2015 MINI Cooper: LA Auto Show
What Is It?
An iconic 2-door hatchback, the 2015 MINI Cooper is all-new, marking the Cooper's third generation since BMW took the reins over a decade ago. It makes its worldwide debut at the 2013 Los Angeles Auto Show.
While the new Cooper generally keeps its familiar pug-faced styling, the nose is longer and more upright this time around. The car's dimensions have grown across the board, including an extra 3.9 inches front to back, and MINI claims noticeable improvements in rear-passenger comfort and cargo capacity.
Moving to the dashboard, the pie-plate-sized central display remains, but it no longer houses the speedometer, which has been relocated to the gauge cluster behind the steering wheel. An iDrive-style infotainment system will be offered in that central display instead, while a traditional 3-knob climate control system takes the place of the outgoing model's odd vertical thumb-switches. Happily, MINI's trademark shiny toggle switches have made the cut, appearing in their customary spots on the overhead console and at the base of the center stack.
Under the hood, the base Cooper will be powered by a 1.5-liter 3-cylinder engine with 134 horsepower and 162 lb-ft of torque, while the Cooper S gets a 2.0-liter 4-cylinder with 189 hp and 207 lb-ft. Both engines employ a twin-scroll turbocharger, which means the old naturally aspirated base engine is no longer available. A 6-speed manual transmission will continue to be the standard offering, with an automatic unit available. The Environmental Protection Agency has not rated fuel economy, but we expect a highway figure of 40 miles per gallon or better; the outgoing car topped out at 37 mpg.
How Much?
MINI pricing has been creeping upward in recent years, but we still expect the base model to start at a reasonable $23,000 or so. Figure at least mid-to-high $20,000s for the zippy Cooper S.
When Can You Get It?
March 2014
Add It to Your Shopping List Because...
The MINI was already an awesome car, but the 2015 model looks to be significantly improved in key areas. There's more room and better ergonomics inside, respectable power in the formerly weak-kneed base model and better fuel economy than ever. As long as you're cool with that elongated nose, the 2015 MINI Cooper is a must-drive in this segment.
Other Cars to Consider
Ford Fiesta ST-- The similarly compact Fiesta ST offers robust turbocharged performance and track-ready handling for less coin than a Cooper S.
Volkswagen Golf -- Scheduled to hit the market around the same time, the new 2015 Golf has considerably more interior space, and it's also offered in frugal TDI (turbodiesel) and sporty GTI trims.
Scion FR-S-- Sure, it's a rear-wheel-drive sports car, but the FR-S is also stylish, fun-to-drive and affordable, just like the MINI. It's an interesting comparison.
Used MINI Cooper -- Yeah, we said it. Although the new MINI is appealing, its predecessor remains an all-around excellent car, and there should be some great deals on used MINIs when the 2015 Cooper starts arriving in dealerships.


text: Monument for transition is a monument for the constant changes that the people of Moengo are subject to. It's as well a monument for changes in the past as for changes that are happening on this very moment. It's a monument for small changes, that are hardly noticable, and huge changes with great concequenses. It's a monument for nature, that rapidly changes all unused objects into jungle by covering it with moss, bushes and tropical flowers. It's a monument for Toyota, that changed the streetscape drastically by filling up the streets with their cars. And it's a monument for the Chinese that came to Suriname and took over almost all of the supermarkets. It's a monument for the enormous amount of schoolchildren that grow up in Moengo and are developping their talents and eventually might use these talents to make even more transitions to the town. But it's also a monument for the enormous transition that took place after the civil war. A transition that is still having it's effect on the people. And at last there are the transitions that are still to come. What transition will the current government bring? And what transition will take place after Suralco, the mining company where many Moengonese are employed, leaves the city? –Wouter Klein Velderman


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Degrees Programs and Courses
Information about the undergraduate Bachelor's Degree in Political Science.
The Political Science department offers two minors. Our Law and Society minor is a program of special interest to students who plan graduate studies in law, careers in government service or the legal field. We also offer a minor in Environmental Politics in which students are introduced to the politics of environmental policy-making in local, national, and global arenas
We offer a concentration in Environmental Politics and Policy through the Northern Studies Master's Degree program.
The University of Alaska at Fairbanks offers Interdisciplinary Masters and Doctoral Degrees. This interdisciplinary program provides flexibility to students with well-defined goals who do not fit into one of the established majors offered by the university. For example, a student could design a doctoral program focusing on political science and wilderness management.
One of the specialized interdisciplinary degree programs offered at the Masters and Doctoral level is the new Regional Resilience and Adaptation program. Its training integrates several fields in the natural and social sciences to train students for careers in academia, govenment, and management to address issues of regional sustainability in an integrated systems framework.
Course Information
General courses offered in Political Science
Sample syllabi for Political Science courses
For the Political Science courses offered this fall semester
The current University of Alaska Course Catalog
Political Science also offers courses online through the UAF eCampus


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DoD silent on major changes to Tricare Prime
DoD silent on major changes to Tricare Prime
More than 170,000 retired military personnel and their family members face significant changes to their medical care on Oct. 1, yet the Pentagon has been strangely silent on the coming changes, sending out just one notification letter earlier this year that contained scant details.
Starting Oct. 1, the Pentagon plans to reduce Tricare Prime service areas to within a 40-mile radius of active or former military installations, forcing 173,000 retirees and their family members to switch to Tricare Standard or seek a waiver if they live within 100 miles of an existing network.
The decision will affect retirees and their dependents in Prime, and those on Tricare Young Adult Prime. That totals 98,771 people in the Tricare South region; 37,404 in the North region; and 36,706 in the West region.
The Pentagon notified affected beneficiaries in April. But a second planned reminder letter, one that likely will contain more information on Tricare Standard, is more than a month late.
Defense Department officials repeatedly have deferred interview requests from Military Times to discuss the pending changes in more detail.
The Pentagon has said the cuts will save the government $45 million to $65 million a year, based on estimates that DoD pays about $600 more a year, on average, to provide Prime to a beneficiary compared to Standard.
But the cuts may come at a price for beneficiaries accustomed to using Tricare Prime, a program similar to a health maintenance organization.
Rebecca Brown, a 60-year-old school teacher in Jackson, Miss., is among those affected by the change. She described the lack of information coming from the Defense Department as bewildering.
For the past 35 years, Brown either has received her health care at a military hospital or has been enrolled in Tricare Prime.
Now she doesnt know whether shell be allowed to see the same doctor or be required to pay up front and file all her own paperwork on claims.
I called Tricare and couldnt get any answers. I know Ill be eligible for Tricare Standard, but I dont even know what that means, she said.
DoD has wanted to cut its Prime service areas since 2007, when it published requirements for the management contracts of the three Tricare regions. But the Pentagon has done little to publicize the changes.
In late 2011, it quietly began notifying physicians and health care providers of the cutbacks. Subsequent media reports prompted lawmakers in Oregon and Nevada the first areas affected to press for additional information.
The House version of the proposed 2014 defense authorization bill contains a provision that would require Tricare to grant affected beneficiaries a one-time opt-in to remain on Tricare Prime.
The Senate version of the bill contains no similar provision.
Active-duty members and their families would not be affected by the change. Those living outside the condensed Prime service areas may use Standard or Tricare Prime Remote, a program for those living in rural areas.
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Inspiring collections
ARTIST ROOMS is an inspirational collection of modern and contemporary art acquired for the nation by National Galleries of Scotland and Tate through the generosity of Anthony d'Offay. ARTIST ROOMS On Tour enables this collection to reach and inspire new audiences across the country, particularly young people.View collection
Scottish Art
The National Galleries of Scotland is responsible for the national collection of Scottish art, the most important of its kind in the world. Our definition of Scottish art is broad, and embraces artworks and artists with a varied range of associations with this country – from the artist's nationality to the subject of the work. In this collection, you can explore a selection of highlights from our collection of Scottish art.View collection