MICAWBER DAY 2025
By:
January 18, 2025
As we do each year on January 18th, we urge you today to drop everything and celebrate… MICAWBER DAY.
The charismatic, labor-averse character Wilkins Micawber was introduced to the world in 1850 via Dickens’s David Copperfield. Here’s a sample passage:
‘You find us, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, with one eye on Traddles, ‘at present established, on what may be designated as a small and unassuming scale; but, you are aware that I have, in the course of my career, surmounted difficulties, and conquered obstacles. You are no stranger to the fact, that there have been periods of my life, when it has been requisite that I should pause, until certain expected events should turn up; when it has been necessary that I should fall back, before making what I trust I shall not be accused of presumption in terming—a spring. The present is one of those momentous stages in the life of man. You find me, fallen back, for a spring; and I have every reason to believe that a vigorous leap will shortly be the result.’
Since at least 1859 (the year of its earliest citation in the OED, from the Tioga County [Penn.] Agitator), the eponymous adjective “Micawberish” has come to mean something like so: Living in optimistic expectation of better fortune, without lifting a finger to make it come any sooner.
On Micawber Day, an international holiday that we first announced over a decade ago, on January 18, 2013 — please note that George Cukor’s film adaptation of David Copperfield, in which W.C. Fields brilliantly portrays Micawber, was released on January 18th, 1935 — we urge HILOBROW’s idler and idleness-curious readers to remember that… SOMETHING WILL TURN UP!