Charles Dickens (author)

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Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was a Victorian novelist who penned such works as Great Expectations, Pickwick Papers, and Oliver Twist. Perhaps his best-known work is A Christmas Carol, used as the basis for The Muppet Christmas Carol and for portions of A Sesame Street Christmas Carol.

References

• Gonzo played Charles Dickens in The Muppet Christmas Carol.

• The 1982 book A Sesame Street Christmas features the story "Oscar's Christmas Carol (A Dickens of a Story)," in which Oscar the Grouch reads the famed Dickens book.

• In an Ernie and Bert sketch featuring Bert vocally copying Ernie's drumming, Bert is reading A Tale of Two Breakfasts at the beginning and end of the sketch. This is a reference to Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities, which opens with the famous line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Similarly, Bert's book replaces "times" with "oatmeals."

• At the beginning of the "One and One Make Two" sketch, Bert is reading: "It was the best of pigeons, it was the worst of pigeons..." This was kept when the script was reworked into the song "Adding, Adding, Adding".

• A 1981 activity book, Put & Play Yucchy Book, shows Oscar reading his favorite Grouch novel, A Tale of Two Grouches.

• The fourth-season Muppet Babies episode "Invasion of the Muppet Snackers" includes a scene in which Baby Kermit imagines himself in a food line, being served gruel, and steadying himself to ask for more, as in Dickens' Oliver Twist.

• When the lights go out in The Jim Henson Hour episode "Musicians", Vicki uses the cover of darkness to recite some theatre by paraphrasing the final line from A Tale of Two Cities: "'Tis a far, far better thing than I have ever done be..."

• The 1999 Creature Shop TV movie Alice in Wonderland featured a scene utilizing giant books as backdrops. Dickens' novel Little Dorrit is among the texts.

• Animal spoofed Dickens' Oliver Twist in an installment of Animal Theatre on Muppets.com.

• At the end of A Sesame Street Christmas Carol, Joe Marley in a guise as a child, introduces himself as "Joey Dickens".

• In the "Pigs in Space" sketch in The Muppet Show Comic Book #6, Captain Link Hogthrob becomes attached to a baby alien they are transporting to the planet Fagentwizt IV. The name is a play on Fagin and the title character's name from Dickens' novel, Oliver Twist.

• The Muppet Meeting Film "Sales Savvy" begins with the narrator reciting "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."