Chautauqua Festival 2024 – Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens by Larry Bounds

HISTORY ALIVE 2024 – Through the Looking Glass  – Image or Truth? Hear their stories in their own words.

Ever since Charles Dickens published his first novel in 1836, his readers have enjoyed his vivid characters, exciting plots and his enthralling views of Victorian British life that celebrated the era’s romantic nostalgia while brutally exposing the filthy underbelly of society across all levels of class and income.  Dickens grew up poor and knew hunger and the uncertainty of a family struggling while his father was imprisoned in the poor house.  He sweated as a child laborer in the blacking factory, but he overcame it all to rise in society, to rub shoulders with the rich and famous, and to become the darling of the English-speaking masses around the world as the celebrated author of classic novels.

Larry Bounds has been a Chautauqua performer for more than twenty years and has presented an assortment of historical figures including Churchill, Einstein, Cronkite, Houdini and Disney for festivals from Florida to Colorado.  He retired as a nationally certified teacher after 35 years in the classroom in 2019, but he still regularly performs as a professional musician as he has since 1973.  While training with the Clarence Brown Theater Company he earned a B.A. in theater and later an M.S. in education from The University of Tennessee. He lives in Greer, South Carolina with his wife Carole and serves on several community boards.

Complete details at the Greenville Chautauqua website