The tale of the orphan, Pip, and his mysterious benefactor provides a grotesque but pointed comedy that explores the many levels of English society with insight and sympathy as well as a satiric eye. Considered by many to be Dickens's best novel, GREAT EXPECTATIONS is the story of a young man who rises out of a rough, deprived childhood to a life ...
Dickens's only serious, uncomic novel, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, is set during the French Revolution and tells a story of unselfish devotion. The beautiful Lucy Manette marries Charles Darnay, the descendant of an aristocratic French family denounced by the revolutionaries, among whom are the memorably evil fanatic Mme. Defarge. When Darnay is ...
A CHRISTMAS CAROL, Dickens's tender and comic tale of the Cratchit family, Tiny Tim, and Ebenezer Scrooge, has been a favorite since it was written in 1843. Badly in need of money, Dickens produced A CHRISTMAS CAROL in six weeks; the first printing of 6,000 copies sold out instantly. In Dickens's original version, Tiny Tim was Tiny Fred, and ...
Dickens's second novel was a far cry from THE PICKWICK PAPERS, his first. The story of an orphan who flees the workhouse only to fall in with a gang of thieves and prostitutes in London's sleazy underworld, it was a trenchant criticism of England's poor laws. Enacted in the 1830s, these laws provided assistance for the poor only through workhouses ...
Dickens's heavily autobiographical novel describing a young man's rise in the world is a classic coming-of-age story. David Copperfield, the narrator, is orphaned at a tender age and raised first by his brutal stepfather (who halts his schooling and sends him to work in a factory--as did Dickens's own father), then by a kindly aunt. He trains for ...
This novel includes an introduction and notes by Dinny Thorold, University of Westminster and is illustrated by F. Walker and Maurice Greiffenhagen. Unusually for Dickens, "Hard Times" is set, not in London, but in the imaginary mid-Victorian Northern industrial town of Coketown with its blackened factories, downtrodden workers and polluted ...
In the world of books, there are hundreds of timeless classics. But only one collection of great works is a classic in itself - "Britannica's Great Books". This 60-volume set brings you centuries of celebrated writings from the greatest minds of all time, including Plato, Shakespeare, Swift, Freud, Hemingway and Twain. "Britannica's Great Books" ...
The young and dashing d'Artagnan and his compatriots--Athos, Porthos and Aramis--versus the master of intrigue, Cardinal Richelieu and the evil Lady de Winter. This incomparable historical novel is unparalleled as the archetype of literary romance and adventure.
The English legal system is the main object of Dickens's satire in BLEAK HOUSE, perhaps the first legal thriller, which centers on the interminable case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce as it makes its tortuous way over the generations through the Court of Chancery. The battle drags on, the litigants are ruined by the legal fees, and the case itself ...
Dickens's novel--in its day, one of his most beloved--follows the career of the depraved dwarf Quilp, and introduces poor, innocent Little Nell, who is too good for this world. When Little Nell and her grandfather are forced to flee Quilp's evil clutches, various upright characters try to intervene and save them, but the frail and debilitated Nell ...
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD, Dickens's last novel, left unfinished when he died in June 1870, is set in an English cathedral town. It tells the potentially sordid tale of an opium addict, John Jasper; Rosa Bud, the woman he loves; Edwin Drood, who disappears during a Christmas Eve storm; and Dick Datchery, the detective in charge of the case, who ...
Dickens's huge, rambling novel tells the story of the Nickleby family after the death of the father, when the family is tyrannized by their nefarious Uncle Ralph. Nicholas becomes a schoolmaster at a brutal Yorkshire school run by the evil-hearted Wackford Squeers, who treats his young charges with neglectful brutality. Nicholas and the orphan boy ...
With an Introduction and Notes by Deborah Wynne, Chester College and illustrated by Marcus Stone, "Our Mutual Friend", Dickens' last complete novel, gives one of his most comprehensive and penetrating accounts of Victorian society. Its vision of a culture stifled by materialistic values emerges not just through its central narratives, but through ...
Dickens's first novel, serialized in 1836 and 1837, is a loosely structured series of comic travelers' tales following Samuel Pickwick and his three friends to various towns around England. The book is renowned for its easy good humor and rich cast of characters, but it is nevertheless not without a touch of Dickens's characteristic social ...
The full title of Dickens's novel is DEALINGS WITH THE FIRM OF DOMBEY AND SON, RETAIL, WHOLESALE, AND FOR EXPORTATION--which clearly establishes it as a novel about business. The widowed Mr. Dombey, obsessed with his firm and its future, dotes on his son, who will become his partner, and neglects his daughter, Florence. Young Paul Dombey, however, ...
Dickens's second novel, OLIVER TWIST, the story of an orphan who flees the workhouse only to fall in with a gang of thieves and prostitutes in London's sleazy underworld, was a trenchant criticism of England's poor laws. Enacted in the 1830s, these laws provided assistance for the poor only through workhouses, which were deliberately squalid and ...
One of Dickens's most socially conscious novels, BARNABY RUDGE dramatizes the conflict between apprentice and master that resulted in violence in both public and private. Set in 1780 during the Gordon "No Popery" riots, the plot involves a murder that occurred 20 years earlier, as well as the results of the anti-Catholic mob violence. One of ...
Charles Dickens's first published book, "Sketches by Boz" (1836) heralded an exciting new voice in English literature. This richly varied collection of observation, fancy and fiction shows the London he knew so intimately at its best and worst - its streets, theatres, inns, pawnshops, law courts, prisons, omnibuses and the river Thames - in honest ...
Written between 1846 and 1849, Dickens wrote this biography of Jesus Christ for his children. As he wrote it for children he forbade its publication. Its first American edition was published finally in 1934 and became an immediate bestseller.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL, Dickens's tender and comic tale of the Cratchit family, Tiny Tim, and Ebenezer Scrooge, has been a favorite since it was written in 1843. Badly in need of money, Dickens produced A CHRISTMAS CAROL in six weeks; the first printing of 6,000 copies sold out instantly. In Dickens's original version, Tiny Tim was Tiny Fred, and ...
After reading "Christmas Carol", the notoriously reclusive Thomas Carlyle was 'seized with a perfect convulsion of hospitality' and threw not one but two Christmas dinner parties. The impact of the story may not always have been so dramatic but, along with Dickens other Christmas writings, it has had a lasting and significant influence upon our ...
A CHRISTMAS CAROL is Dickens's tender and comic tale of the Cratchit family, Tiny Tim, and Ebenezer Scrooge--a favorite ever since it was written, in 1843. Badly in need of money, Dickens produced A CHRISTMAS CAROL in six weeks; the first printing of 6,000 copies sold out instantly. In Dickens's original version, Tiny Tim was Tiny Fred, and ...
Young Martin Chuzzlewit, a careless lad who is scorned by his tough and upright old grandfather, travels to America to seek his fortune. Dickens's satiric vision of America as a place full of criminals and disease alienated many of his American fans, but Martin survives his American ordeal and returns to England. He finds his grandfather in thrall ...
In PICTURES FROM ITALY, Charles Dickens brings his quirky perspective to a tour of the country in the mid-1840s, looking askance at the domination of the Catholic church, but always alive to the beauty of the place and to the rich traditions of Italian culture. He did not, however, fail to be outraged by the poverty that greeted him in such cities ...
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