GEORGE NEWLIN '52 GATHERS NAMES FROM DICKENS
Charles Dickens (1812-70) died 125 years ago, and many high school students, wading through David Copperfield, surely prefer he stay dead. But to more seasoned readers, Dickens remains among the treasured names in literature, giving us characters who have captivated us for generations: Tiny Tim, Scrooge, Mr. Micawber, Charles Darnay, Miss Havesham, Mr. Pickwick.
For more about those names-and thousands of others-readers of Dickens can now turn to a compendium of facts amassed by George C. Newlin '52, of Garrison, New York. Published in September by Greenwood Press, in Westport, Connecticut, the three-volume, 2,568-page Everyone in Dickens sells for $275. But what Dickens devotee could put a price on the definitive reference to people in the writer's complete works-offering, as it does, more than 13,000 explanatory listings of names in everything Dickens is known to have written, from his famous novels to magazine articles and public addresses, 587 titles in all? Next year, the publisher will come out with a fourth volume by Newlin, Everything in Dickens, a study of the ideas contained in the works.
The project is remarkable in a number of ways. For starters, Newlin isn't a Dickens scholar, and this is his first published work. A lawyer by training (Yale *55) and a serious amateur singer, Newlin for most of his career has flourished as a money manager-doing well enough with his own firm to take early retirement. In high school he'd read a few Dickens novels and had "thoroughly enjoyed" them, but his obsession for this most eminent Victorian did not begin until seven years ago.
Formal and precise, Newlin talks readily about his epic venture but is chary about discussing the event that launched the project: his second wife's handing him divorce papers, in December 1988. "It was an enormously shocking thing to me," he says, and for a time, "about the only thing I wanted to do was read." Newlin picked up The Old Curiosity Shop, which he says has been unfairly branded as "this syrupy, sentimental book." Instead, he found it "a wonderful story."
He recalls sitting in his music room in Chappaqua, New York, where he lived at the time, and evolving the idea of creating a reference work for "people who wanted to find something they had remembered once in Dickens." (He calls his compendium an "analytical anthology" of, or "map" through, Dickens.) Newlin concedes that as the project grew, it became "enormously tedious in some ways." What kept him going, he says, was the realization that "I didn't want to do anything else."
Newlin says he owes a huge debt to the personal computer-his is an Apple Macintosh SE, a relative antique that he upgraded during the course of the project-and Post-it notes, which he used for tagging items in his research documents. In compiling his mountain of information, he relied on a network that came to include some of the world's foremost Dickens scholars, both here and in England.
Finding a publisher for the Dickens tome proved tough. Literary agents shied from it, and Oxford University Press passed on the manuscript. Newlin eventually turned to specialty publishers and settled on Greenwood.
Although not an academic, Newlin has a professorial air. He wears wire-rimmed glasses under a speckled pate, has a white beard and a firm gaze, and speaks in a velvet-rich baritone that hints of his previous avocation as a classical soloist. At Princeton he did a triple major in history, music, and religion, and wrote his senior thesis on the evolution and application of a religious esthetic of music. He also sang in the Glee Club and in the Triangle Show, and was good enough to consider a career in opera-a dream that dissolved during an extended trip to Austria, in 1955-56, when he contracted laryngitis and received a draft notice from his local Selective Service board. While on active duty as an Army chaplain's assistant in Texas, he picked up a master's degree in history at Trinity University, in San Antonio. Back in civilian life, he worked as a corporate lawyer in New York City, then moved into finance and venture capital, forming his own investment advisory firm.
Newlin continues to love music-he is chairman of both the Westchester Conservatory of Music and Westchester County's Council for the Arts-but his consuming passion is now literature. He hopes that his work on Dickens will be recognized as "a permanent contribution to scholarship." For the record, he places Our Mutual Friend at the top of his list of favorite Dickens novels, and his favorite character is Mr. Micawber, in David Copperfield.
Newlin is thinking about writing student guides to Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities, but another weighty project possibly looms on the horizon. In June, while in Ireland chasing down a possible inspiration for Mr. Pickwick, he discovered "there is no really outstanding biography of William Butler Yeats. I'm tempted to expand the envelope of George Newlin and do one. I've begun inquiries as to whether that's practical."
-Jeffrey Marshall '71

SHIRAS WINS AT WIMBLEDON
Leif Shiras '81 (left) and Peter MacNamara hold the trophy they won in the senior men's doubles event at Wimbledon in July.
Shiras, a marketing manager for Oakley sunglasses, had traveled to the Grand Slam tournament on business. But when MacNamara, Shiras's friend and a former tennis partner, needed a quick substitute to play for his injured partner, Paul MacNamee, he turned to Shiras. With official approval and
a borrowed racquet, clothing, and shoes, Shiras took up the challenge. The impromptu pair advanced through the rounds, finally beating Mansour Bahrami of Iran and Jose Higueras of Spain 7-6 (12-10), 7-5. This
was the second time Shiras, who was an all-American at Princeton, had played at Wimbledon. In 1989 he had advanced as far as the fourth
round in men's singles. This Wimbledon win is the first for a Princeton graduate since John Van Ryn '28 won the men's doubles titles in 1929, 1930, and 1931 (see page 34).