Photo by Special to the Sentinel

The 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth is Tuesday. “The whole world knows Dickens, his London and his characters,” wrote Claire Tomalin in “Charles Dickens: A Life.”

Enduring Dickens

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” is the one everybody knows, but the one so many have actually read is this: “My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.”