Title page from an 1894 version of David Copperfield published in Vilna. Dickens was frequently published in serial form; this is part four of the novel.

“Tsarles Dikens” in the Collections
by Melanie J. Meyers, M.S., Senior Reference Librarian, Center for Jewish History

Today marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birthday, and in the spirit of the day, the reference desk at the Center did some detective work to see if Mr. Dickens’s works are held in any of the Center partners’ collections. Indeed, “Tsarles Dikens” is well-represented in the collection of fiction held by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Books by Dickens are available from the YIVO Library in Yiddish, Russian and Hebrew translations, published in Warsaw, St. Petersburg, Tel Aviv and Kiev, to name a few. YIVO holds translations of David Copperfield, The Old Curiosity Shop, Great Expectations, The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist (Oliṿer Ṭṿisṭ), A Tale of Two Cities, The Cricket on the Hearth and A Christmas Carol. It also holds a number of scholarly works that discuss the Jewish characters in Dickens’s works.

Yiddish translations of Dickens’s works present interesting variations on the English book titles. One of the Yiddish editions of David Copperfield is listed as Doṿid ben Doṿid (Ḳopperfild) on the title page, which indicates to the reader that the “David” of this book is an orphan (see above image). We also discovered a 1924 book attributed to Dickens but titled Di Sreyfeh in Londoner Turme. This puzzled us greatly, as the Yiddish translates to The Fire in the London Tower or The Fire in the London Jail (depending on your interpretation), and there is no Dickens book with that title. The English title of the book: Barnaby Rudge.

Want to conduct your own exploration of the collections? You can start by clicking here.

Many thanks to Yeshaya Metal and Edward Portnoy for their assistance in researching these books.