Gerald Charles Dickens (actor) his own British and American tours, Gerald Dickens performs extracts from "The Pickwick Papers", "David Copperfield", "Oliver Twist", "Great Expectations", "Nicholas Nickleby" and "A Christmas Carol" among others, in the latter creating 26 characters in a performance described by "The New York Times" as "a once in a lifetime brush with literary history." Dickens has recorded unabridged audiobooks of "The Pickwick Papers" and "Nicholas Nickleby". In December 2011 he appeared on the BBC's "Songs of Praise". A keen golfer, he wrote and performs the two-act play "Top Hole!", based on four golfing stories by P. G. Wodehouse. In 2015 at
Great Expectations 1861 in the UK. "Harper's" paid £1,000 for publication rights. Dickens welcomed a contract with "Tauchnitz" 4 January 1861 for publication in English for the European continent. Publications in "Harper's Weekly" were accompanied by forty illustrations by John McLenan; however, this is the only Dickens work published in "All the Year Round" without illustrations. Robert L Patten identifies four American editions in 1861 and sees the proliferation of publications in Europe and across the Atlantic as "extraordinary testimony" to "Great Expectations"'s popularity. Chapman and Hall published the first edition in three volumes in 1861, five subsequent reprints between 6 July