Dickens on Screen
Katherine Mezzacappa’s presentation examines the visual nature of the fiction of Charles Dickens, as a writer who worked in serial form, hand-in-hand with illustrators and asks how successfully his vision transposes to large or small screen. She will make reference to the following:
– From engraving and letterpress to the episodic novel: the tragedy of Robert Seymour and The Pickwick Papers
– An angelic child of the workhouse? How George Cruikshank’s conception of Oliver Twist shaped modern adaptations
– George Cukor’s David Copperfield (1935); the debt to Hablot Knight Browne
– Screening to a different audience: how the Dickensian ‘child bride’ (Dora Spenlow, Little Dorrit) ages for the modern audience.
Katherine Mezzacappa is Irish but lives in Carrara, Italy. Writing as Katie Hutton, she is the author of The Gypsy Bride, The Gypsy’s Daughter, Annie of Ainsworth’s Mill and The Maid of Lindal Hall, published by Bonnier Zaffre. Writing under her own name, The Virgin of Florence, will be published by Fairlight Books in 2024 and The Ballad of Mary Kearney is in press with Addision & Highsmith. Her historical short fiction has been published in Aspects of History, Erotic Review Magazine, The Copperfield Review, Turnpike Magazine, Asymmetry Magazine amongst others, and, as Katie Hutton, in Yours and My Weekly. Katherine has been awarded residencies by the Irish Writers Centre and by the Danish Centre for Writers and Translators (at Hald Hovedgaard). She is an assessor for The Literary Consultancy, London, a committee member of the Irish Writers Union and a regular reviewer for the Historical Novel Society. She holds degrees from University of East Anglia, Durham and Canterbury Christ Church. Katherine is represented by Annette Green Authors’ Agency in the UK.
The Historical Novel Society UK 2024 conference 