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The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens's tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters — the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. Combining elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and...
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This is not the great classic novel but a few little-known episodes that Dickens excerpted from the book for his dramatic public readings. His performances were for adults who knew the book, and it may be that only readers familiar with the novel will understand what's going on. Because it is quite seriously abridged, the story concentrates primarily on the extended family of Mr. Peggotty: his orphaned nephew, Ham; his adopted niece, Little Emily;...
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A celebration of Christmas, a tale of redemption and a critique on Victorian society, Dickens' atmospheric novella follows the miserly, penny-pinching Ebenezer Scrooge who views Christmas as 'humbug'. It is only through a series of eerie, life-changing visits from the ghost of his deceased business partner Marley and the spirits of Christmas past, present and future that he begins to see the error of his ways. With heart-rending characters, rich imagery...
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John Harmon returns to England as his father's heir. Believed drowned under suspicious circumstances--a situation convenient to his wish for anonymity--John evaluates Bella Wilfer whom he must marry to secure his inheritance. The story is filled with colorful Victorian characters and incidents -- the faded aristocrats and parvenus gathered at the Veneering's dinner table, Betty Higden and her terror of the workhouse and the greedy plottings of Silas...
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Charles Dickens wrote short stories and essays that are comical, satirical, and morally earnest. This collection of over thirty of Dickens's stories and essays is an invaluable addition to the library of all fans and students of the preeminent Victorian-era writer. The volume includes "The Lamplighter," "To Be Read at Dusk," "Sunday Under Three Heads," along with such short pieces as "Prince Bull, A Fairy Tale," "Our Honorable Friend," and "The Ghost...
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The sensational bestselling story of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, seems to belong less to the history of the Victorian novel than to folklore, fairy tale, or myth. The sorrows of Nell and her grandfather are offset by Dickens's creation of a dazzling contemporary world inhabited by some of his most brilliantly drawn characters-the eloquent ne'er-do-well Dick Swiveller; the hungry maid known as the "Marchioness";...
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At the center of Martin Chuzzlewit is Martin himself, very old, very rich, very much on his guard. What he suspects (with good reason) is that every one of his close and distant relations, now converging in droves on the country inn where they believe he is dying, will stop at nothing to become the inheritor of his great fortune. Having unjustly disinherited his grandson, young Martin, the old fellow now trusts no one but Mary Graham, the pretty girl...
9) The chimes
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The elderly ticket-porter Trotty is disillusioned by all the wrongdoings he observes in the world. Crime, immorality, and poverty seems to be everywhere, and he has the distinct notion that the working class is naturally defective and incapable of change. However, the Chimes of the local church call him into a supernatural vision, where he is to learn just how wrong he is about his fellow man. The Chimes is one of Charles Dickens's classic Christmas...
10) Dombey and Son
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Introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallett Annotation. Dickens set this tale of a selfish, hard-hearted man, the son he favored, and the daughter he slighted, in an England almost prostrate before the storms of change we now call the Industrial Revolution. This is a superb example of Dicken's ability to combine the disparate qualities of a social historian, a theatrical artist, and a poet of the utmost tenderness and insight.
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The Pickwick Papers was Dicken's response to his publisher's request for a monthly series of sporting sketches. It became the most famous of all pre-Victorian novels. The central characters, Mr Pickwick and Sam Weller, are as familiar today as they became on publication, and there are over a hundred other speaking parts. The action is set in the late Georgian period of the writer's earliest youth, drawing on experience and acute observation ranging...
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In 1844, Charles Dickens embarked on a year-long visit to Italy, where he turned his perceptive views of the human condition toward a thoughtful appraisal of the country's soul and character. Combining travelogue with social commentary, he formed a kaleidoscopic portrait of nineteenth-century Italian life as seen by an outsider. Rather than serving as a guidebook, his "pictures" from Italy entertain rather than instruct. Dickens' eye for detail and...
14) Little Dorrit
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Everyman's library volume no. 111
Great books of the Western world volume 47
World's classics
Works volume 7-8
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Great books of the Western world volume 47
World's classics
Works volume 7-8
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Of the complex, richly rewarding masterworks he wrote in the last decade of his life, Little Dorrit is the book in which Charles Dickens most fully unleashed his indignation at the fallen state of mid-Victorian society. Crammed with persons and incidents in whose recreation nothing is accidental or spurious, containing, in its picture of the Circumlocution Office, the most witheringly exact satire of a bureaucracy we possess, Little Dorrit is a stunning...
15) Hard Times
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Thomas Gradgrind, retired businessman and one of Coketown's most prominent citizens, runs his life and his school along strict utilitarian lines. Fact and reason are his governing principles; imagination and sentiment are to be abhorred and suppressed. Gradgrind raises his children, Tom and Louisa, by the same soulless, barren methods, blighting their young lives. Shorn of emotion because of her upbringing, Louisa yields to a loveless marriage to...
16) American notes
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"This is not the republic of my imagination," Charles Dickens noted ruefully of his 1842 visit to the United States. His American Notes forms a stinging reproof of the country's embrace of slavery, its corrupt press and woeful sanitary conditions, and its citizens' offensive manners. Written with the author's customary observational powers and incisive wit, this volume offers a fascinating glimpse of 19th-century America. Dickens was not entirely...
17) Bleak House
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With their estate entangled in an interminable legal case, the young wards of the court Richard Carstone and Ada Clare are taken into the benevolent care of the kindly John Jarndyce. Ada's companion, the gentle and good-hearted Esther Summerson, is devoted to the old man and, although she loves another, becomes betrothed to him. But behind Esther's supposed orphan past lies a dark secret that leads tragically to deceit, blackmail and murder. And as...
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Dr. Manette is released from the Bastille after eighteen years' confinement, which has driven him to the edge of madness. He is "recalled to life" by the joyous reconciliation with his daughter Lucie, and returns with her to England. But Manette's maniacal obsession with shoemaking, developed during his long incarceration, is not quite over, for there are dark secrets surrounding his "crime" that have yet to emerge; secrets involving the reprehensible...