Werepuppy's (Attempt At) Doll-A-Day 2019!

[davidd]

And then you find out he was paid by the chapter and published in a cheap newspaper of the day, and often read by the "lower educated" of the time.

Ah yes, that's right; Dickens was a writer of serialized fiction: penny dreadfuls, nickel weeklies, dime novels, most of which, both the material and the authors, were considered to be sensationalized tripe for the unwashed masses. Why, then, have Dickens, and the American Nathaniel Hawthorne, who also wrote paid-by-the-word serials, been elevated in status to literary greatness, while most others of their ilk continue to be dismissed as talentless hacks who churned out worthless drivel?

This also brings to mind another question that has long intrigued me, but to which I have not yet found a satisfactory answer: were people in the 19th and early 20th centuries better educated than students today? The vocabulary used in most serialized and periodical stories of the time, even those targeting the lowest-common-denominator demographic, was broad, rich, and by today's standards, often arcane. Yet supposedly many of these publications targeted the "youth market."

As an eggsperiment – yes, my idea of "fun" can be pretty boring – a while back I pasted a random sampling of dime novel text (from "Larry Lee, Young Lighthouse Keeper" - Pluck & Luck no. 46, 1899) into a handy online reading level calculator...

http://www.readabilityformulas.com/free-...-tests.php

... and the results indicate a reading level somewhere between 9th and 12th grade. "Afloat with Captain Nemo" from The Boys of New York no. 713, 1889, is assessed slightly higher, grade 12 to university level.

Having worked in public education, I can attest that it is a rare student who reads at or above "grade level."

While kids today may be adept at video gaming and text messaging (which consists largely of abbreviations and emojis), many of them ("many," in this case, meaning nearly all of them), particularly at younger ages, would have a difficult time immersing themselves in the serialized adventures of Buffalo Bill or Jack Wright and Frank Reade, Jr. And those are exciting stories! How the dickens young people could decipher Dickens back in the era when he was originally published is beyond my understanding.

I apologize for derailing your Doll a Day topic with a tangent into literature and literacy.

I do not believe I have ever watched A Muppet Christmas Carol. I shall have to do so. I find Mister Magoo's A Christmas Carol to be one of the most frightening versions. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in that animated version is truly scary. But accurate, no.