May 25 and June 22, 2025 from 1:00-3:00 PM (Pacific) | Virtual Events
In 2024-25, Dickens enthusiasts and Pickwick Club members read two novels, The Old Curiosity Shop (October 2024-April 2025) and Silas Marner (May-June 2025).
For two months, we unpacked George Eliot’s novel, Silas Marner, about an ex-communicated linen weaver that is noted for its realistic portrayal of social dynamics while exploring themes such as community, religion, wealth, and purpose. George Eliot was, in fact, a pen name for novelist, journalist, translator, and poet Mary Ann Evans, whose works label her as one of the leading authors of the Victorian era. Silas Marner was Eliot’s/Evans’s third published book.
May 25, 2025
Chapters 1-10
Introduction of Silas Marner by Nancy Henry (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
June 22, 2025
Chapters 11-End
Concluding discussion of the novel with Wayne Batten (Friends of the Dickens Project)
Header image: “The Cauld Blast” by Joshua Hargrave Sams Mann (1876)
Recommended Edition: We recommend the Penguin Classics edition of the novel for its appendices and notes, but other versions are fine. First-time readers should avoid the Introduction if they don’t want spoilers. Download the novel to read at Gutenburg.org or listen to it at LibriVox.org.
The Santa Cruz Pickwick (Book) Club, a branch of the Dickens Fellowship, is a community of local bookworms, students, and teachers who meet monthly to discuss a nineteenth-century novel. The Santa Cruz Public Libraries provide support for the reading group.
