One of the world’s leading Charles Dickens scholars will be performing a reading of A Christmas Carol in a city church this week.
Paul Schlicke, honorary senior lecturer at Aberdeen University and chairman of the Aberdeen Dickensian Fellowship, is warming up his vocal chords for a seasonal presentation of the Victorian author’s most festive tale at Holburn West Church.
During the performance, which starts at 6.30pm tomorrow, Mr Schlicke will read the seminal Christmas tale in its entirety, complete with different voices for Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.
He said he was looking forward to following in the great author’s footsteps.
“Dickens in his time made his money from his writing and also acting in plays, but he made the majority of his income from live public readings of his work around the country,” he explained.
“One of his most popular readings, and indeed works, was A Christmas Carol, and he would go on tours around Britain and the USA performing it.
“He read it twice, among other stories, at the Aberdeen Music Hall in 1858 and again in 1866, and was actually invited to become the rector of Marischal College, but he turned down the offer.
“A Christmas Carol is interesting on a whole series of levels, and contains very typical Dickensian pathos and social criticism. It very quickly became his most famous work and a cultural text that has since been adapted endlessly by the likes of Mickey Mouse and the Muppets.
“The evening won’t just be for academics, although they of course will enjoy it, but anybody who wants to come along is most welcome.”
The Aberdeen Dickensian Fellowship, first formed in 2012 on the bicentenary of the author’s birth, is the only branch of the international organisation in Scotland after the Edinburgh branch closed in the 1950s.
Members in the north-east have been given the honour of hosting the body’s annual celebration of the life of Charles Dickens in 2016.
Mr Schlicke said: “The fellowship was founded in 1902, which at more than 100 years old makes it essentially the oldest, and biggest, fan club of a dead author in the world with members in the States, England, Japan, Australia and more.