On 1st May 2014, Birkbeck’s Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies will begin a project to read Dickens’s final completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, in its original monthly instalments. The reading project will run from May 2014 to November 2015, matching the 150th anniversary of the novel’s original serialised publication (May 1864 – November 1865).
We are also running a creative project alongside the main reading group, in which participants will take on the role of one of the characters in the novel, and run a Twitter account as this character.
We are looking for volunteers to participate in this project. You’ll be assigned a character’s Twitter account, and, each month, you’ll need to read the instalment and tweet what you have been doing that month, in character. However, the extent of your involvement is up to you: alongside the main plot-tweets, you can share links or interact with the other participants, provided everything is done in character!
At the end of the project, we hope to collect together the tweets using Storify, allowing us to reconstruct Dickens’s story through these digital interactions.
To take part, or for more information, please email Emma Curry (Birkbeck College) on e.curry@bbk.ac.uk. Please state if you have a preference for which character you would like to play – they will be allotted on a first-come, first-served basis.
For more information on the monthly reading project, see http://dickensourmutualfriend.wordpress.com/
We look forward to tweeting with you!