Customer Reviews

Master Humphrey's Clock and Other Stories (Everyman Paperback Classics)

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Collection of short stories tied by the fact that they were told during the sessions of Mr. Humphrey's Clock Club. The narrators are Mr. Humphrey himself, Johnny, Redburn, Mr. Miles, Mr. Pickwick and the Deaf Gentleman. Following the line of the "Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club", these tales are less outrageous and more humanistic, full of nostalgia and good humor. One good thing is that the Wellers and Mr. Pickwick reappear.

This was Dickens only real writing failure. He had to abandon the Master Humphrey's Clock series due to readership rejection after approximately six serial publications, and the readers had mostly gone after the first story. In short, he departed from his popular themes and got ahead of the readers. As a result, he found himself with no audience. In his next novel, "The Old Curiosity Shop," he refers in the forward to the Humphrey series as "desultory" and was obviously not content with his own efforts there.

Overall, I thought the effort was terrible considering that Dickens was the author. It is a series of stories by some older men who are retired and who frequent a club. They recall various stories involving intrigue and murder and some stories that take place in dreams. This is not a good read: it is neither compelling nor interesting. I read it and was not too excited about the stories. After I started to research the book, I was surprised that it was still in print. Profession critics refer to it as "a frame without a picture." That is, the club setting of retired old men with their stories is the frame. But nothing of interest followed in terms of stories from the retired men. Just before terminating the series, Dickens tried to breathe life into it with the Pickwick characters, but it was too little too late.

As background information, I am in the process of reading most of Dickens's 22 novels and longer short stories, and set up a Listmania list. As a suggestion, avoid the Penguin Popular Classics with the plain green covers (I bought two). They fall apart and do not stand up to a read, especially books over 500 pages in length. The Regular Penguin Classics with the photo or painting on the front are excellent and some have maps and illustrations (drawings). The Wordsworth Classics are not as good, and some are illustrated.

Getting back to the present book, the only thing positive that came from the series was the idea to drop the series and use the concept to launch a new book which was called "The Old Curiosity Shop." That of course was a success.

So, this is Dickens worst collection of short stories. It was a commercial failure when it came out. The publisher lost money, and it is still bad.