“Everyone expected this comet to hit and obliterate England in 1857,” says Francine Prose in this episode of The World in Time. “So a lot of the novel is about the pressure from this belief or non-belief that the comet is going to hit. And of course, Dickens, who’s sort of scientifically minded, dismisses it immediately. And Andersen, who is romantic—paranoid, fearful, the whole list of things which would make you believe you’re about to be obliterated by a comet—is completely convinced and can’t really accept Dickens’ attempts to reassure his household that this is not going to happen.”

 

This week on the podcast, Donovan Hohn speaks with Francine Prose, editor-at-large of Lapham’s Quarterly, about her new novel Five Weeks in the Country, which, mingling historical fact with fiction, narrates five disastrous weeks that Hans Christian Andersen spent with Charles Dickens and his family in the summer of 1857. The episode ends with an audio version of Hans Christian Andersen’s contribution to The City issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, a tour of Venice narrated by the moon. 

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WORKS CITED

(In order of mention.)

 

Francine Prose. What to Read and Why. New York: Harper Perennial, 2019.

 

Francine Prose. Five Weeks in the Country. New York: Harper, 2026.

 

Francine Prose. The Vixen. New York: Harper Perennial, 2022.

 

Francine Prose. Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932. New York: Harper Perennial, 2015.

 

Francine Prose. 1974: A Personal History. New York: Harper Perennial, 2025.

 

Charles Dickens. Great Expectations. London: Penguin Classics, 2002.

 

Alexandra Alter. “Lapham’s Quarterly Will Begin Its Revival with Website and Podcast,” The New York Times, June 12, 2025.

 

Brassaï. Lesbian Couple at Le Monocle. 1932. Gelatin silver print. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

 

Alfred Hitchcock, director. Vertigo. Paramount Pictures, 1958.

 

Lars von Trier, director. Melancholia. Magnolia Pictures, 2011.

 

Evan S. Connell. Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn. New York: North Point Press, 1997.

 

Hans Christian Andersen. The Ugly Duckling. Illustrated by John Hassall. Bristol: Pook Press, 2012.

 

Hans Christian Andersen. The Little Mermaid and Other Fairy Tales. Illustrated by MinaLima. New York: Harper, 2018.

 

Hans Christian Andersen. The Red Shoes. Bristol: Pook Press, 2016.

 

Hans Christian Andersen. The Complete Stories of Hans Christian Andersen: The Shorter Tales. Translated by Jean Hersholt. Illustrated by Fritz Kredel. New York: Heritage Press, 1948.

 

Charles Dickens. Little Dorrit. London: Penguin Classics, 2004.

 

Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.

 

Charles Dickens. The Old Curiosity Shop. London: Penguin Classics, 2001.

 

Charles Dickens. The Complete Writings of Charles Dickens: Volume XXXVII, Letters 1833-1870, Part 1. Boston: Charles E. Lauriat Company, 1923.

 

Jeffrey Eugenides. The Virgin Suicides. London: Picador, 2018.

 

Joshua Ferris. Then We Came to the End. Boston: Little, Brown Paperbacks, 2008.

 

Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.

 

Hans Christian Andersen. The Snow Queen. Illustrated by Edmund Dulac. Garden City, NY: Dover Books, 2013.

 

Wilfred Jackson, director. The China Shop. Walt Disney Productions, 1934.

 

Jack Cutting, Clyde Geronimi, and Hamilton Luske, directors. The Ugly Duckling. Walt Disney Productions, 1939.

 

Ron Clements and John Musker, directors. The Little Mermaid. Walt Disney Pictures, 1989.

 

Roger Allers, director. The Little Matchgirl. Walt Disney Pictures, 2006. 

 

Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, directors. Frozen. Walt Disney Pictures, 2013.

 

Michael Slater. The Great Charles Dickens Scandal. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012.

 

Charles Dickens. Bleak House. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.

 

Hans Christian Andersen. Hans Christian Andersen’s Correspondence. Edited by Frederick Crawford. London: Dean & Son, 1891.

 

Hans Christian Andersen. The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories. Translated by Erik Christian Haugaard. New York: Anchor, 1983. 

 

Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace: The definitive translation newly revised. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. Revised, edited, and introduced by Amy Mandelker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

 

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Don Quixote. Translated by John Rutherford. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.

 

Herman Melville. Moby-Dick: A Norton Critical Edition. Edited by Hershel Parker. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017.

 

Lapham’s Quarterly, Fall 2010: The City. 

 

Gustave Flaubert. Voyage en Egypte. Edited by Pierre-Marc de Biasi. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1991. 

 

Jorge Luis Borges. On Argentina. London: Penguin Classics, 2010.

 

Joan Didion. Miami. New York: Vintage Books, 1998.

 

Marguerite Duras. The Lover. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998.

 

Franz Kafka. The Diaries of Franz Kafka. Translated by Ross Benjamin. New York: Schocken, 2024.

 

Orhan Pamuk. Istanbul: Memories and the City. New York: Vintage Books, 2006.

 

“Never Can There Come a Fog Too Thick: Charles Dickens on mud, fog, and the law,” Lapham’s Quarterly, Fall 2010: The City.

 

Hans Christian Andersen. What the Moon Saw: And Other Tales. Translated by H.W. Dulcken. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1866.