Charles Dickens is one of the most famous writers in literary history. He's representative of the Victorian period (a time when Robert Browning was painting beautiful portraitures like My Last Duchess; George Eliot was penning her famous The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch; Thomas Hardy imagined Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles). But his mark extends far beyond the confines of his own time (it's been 200 years since his birth, and we're still reading and LOVING his novels)...

So, why?

Charles Dickens drew from an early life of poverty, loneliness and exile. He gathered up his experiences with the comic-tragic-villainous mix of human beings--all to create his magic of fiction (with a universality that still touches us today): Hard Times, David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol, Our Mutual Friend, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, and beyond. With all those unforgettable characters and engaging plots, Dickens still manages to draw us all into his flights of imagination.

We're introduced into his world of hard times, with all those divine moments of laughter, tears, loneliness, and depression... the ecstasy of romance and the utter devastation of love lost. No wonder his novels are still such favorites in (and out of) the classroom! They've become part of our dreams, our cherished imaginings.

In Nicholas Nickleby, he wrote, "Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on the earth in the night season, and melt away with the first beam of the sun which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world."

Happy Birthday to the master of storytelling! Join us in celebrating 200 years of great novels--with thousands of pages, filled with the stories that we hope to never forget... May we forever remember!

Christopher Marlowe was born on February 6, 1564, but he was baptized on February 26. Beyond his fame as a spy for the Queen's Privy Council, he was a poet and dramatist, who is known for works like The Jew of Malta and The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. There are also those who believe that Christopher Marlowe was actually William Shakespeare.

The span of his dramatic career lasted a short 6 years. At the age of 29, Marlowe was killed in a tavern brawl. In The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, Marlowe writes:

"Come live with me, and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields."

Time has played a part in reshaping the Christopher Marlowe's myth and legend. His works have--from time to time--fallen out of fashion. But, as Park Honan says, "even when Marlowe's reputation was at its lowest, the beauty of his verse drew attention--a sign that he would keep his power." In the end, he "belongs to us." He dramatized human existence--with all the frailties and foibles--and he "affirmed human strengths."

So much has been said (and written) about the simplest of gestures: a kiss. Is it a kiss to say hello? Goodbye? Is it the kiss of betrayal, or an expression of friendship? Perhaps, it express some spoken (or unspoken) passion? It could be the author's way of building passionate intensity.

We want and need to know: Where do we go from here. Is the kiss an end, or just a beginning of everything that will unfold for the characters in the pages to follow? For some characters, it would appear safer to let the story unfold--without analyzing the kiss too much. At least we--as readers--are not in danger of jinxing the relationship as we try to decipher the lines. We can let our imaginations go wild, and then let ourselves be drawn back to the text: the poem, story, novel--to see what the final authorial intent is.

There's so much imagery surrounding the advent of a kiss...

Victor Hugo wrote: "How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said."

Percy Bysshe Shelly wrote, "What are all these kissings worth, / If thou kiss not me?"

In The Kiss, Kate Chopin's Harvey quietly tells the girl, "I've stopped kissing women; it's dangerous."

Yes, books must be dangerous too. We are haunted by the most beautiful passages--so many experiences, seen through the lives of those indelibly and artfully drawn lovers. So, let the lines draw you forward. Dream a little dream, and imagine all those moments in literary history. Which one is your favorite? Do you remember a particular kiss?

In Cyrano de Bergerac Edmond Rostand wrote: "And what is a kiss, specifically? A pledge properly sealed, a promise seasoned to taste, a vow stamped with the immediacy of a lip, a rosy circle drawn around the verb 'to love.' A kiss is a message too intimate for the ear, infinity captured in the bee's brief visit to a flower, secular communication with an aftertaste of heaven, the pulse rising from the heart to utter its name on a lover's lip: 'Forever.'"

Groundhog Day (or Groundhog's Day) is an interesting story in itself. Just think for a moment... People get together and watch to see whether a little rodent-looking creature (okay, he's known as a woodchuck, marmot, or ground squirrel) casts a shadow. It doesn't really matter whether he does or not, because it's a conversation piece for at least the entire day of February 2nd.

I guess that's what we get for buying into all these stories we're told. We jump at shadows...

• Walt Whitman once wrote: "That shadow my likeness that goes to and fro seeking a livelihood...."
• Madeleine L'Engle wrote: "It has only recently struck me that we need our shadow-casters, metaphorically as well as physically. What in me casts shadows, and what kind?"
• Lord Byron wrote: "The dread of vanished shadows --Are they so? Is not the past all shadow?"
• Robert Louis Stevenson wrote: "I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me."

What shadows do you see today? What are you reading?