Competition: Distilling Dickens

In Competition No. 2733 you were invited to condense the plot of a Dickens novel into a triple limerick.

In case you hadn’t noticed, it would have been Dickens’s 200th birthday this week, and this assignment is a modest contribution to the avalanche of Dickens-related events unleashed across the globe by the bicentenary. (Even estate agents have jumped on the bandwagon: ‘Dickens Mania Brings sales boost to Victorian Homes in the Capital’.)

The challenge attracted an enormous and impressive postbag. Well done, one and all. It is a tall order to boil down the great man’s works to 15 lines, and you didn’t shy away from the especially densely plotted doorstops such as Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend.

Honourable mentions go to unlucky losers Nicholas Holbrook, G.W. Tapper, Carolyn Beckingham, Imke Thormählen and Janet Kenny. I am not awarding the bonus fiver this week, but the winners, printed below, pocket a well-deserved £25 each.

An heir fakes his death: Noddy Boffin
 Inherits the dung. He’s a toff in
    A world that’s uncheering
    (Think Podsnap, Veneering)
 And as wooden as dolls or a coffin.

Fledgeby, a vicious young dreg,
 And a peg-leg peculiar called Wegg,
    And others scrounge gems
    In the yellow-phlegm Thames,
 Although paupers like Betty won’t beg.

The heir reappears, comes to life,
 And with Noddy, he cuts through the strife.
    There are villains who quarrel,
    Drown in ooze (that’s the moral).
 But the good guys, hurrah, find a wife.
 Bill Greenwell  

A scruffy young yokel called Pip
 gives food to a con who’s jumped ship
 and whose secret intent is to make Pip a gent
 while in Oz on a long penal trip.

The barmy old bird at The Hall,
 still dressed for her wedding-day ball,
 tempts Pip with a bint who is colder than flint,
 plus the hint of real wealth, I recall.