Charles Dickens

A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future.

A tale of family secrets and the damaging corruption of the British legal system from the author of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. In Bleak House, Charles Dickens not only pries apart the stultifying and ponderous conduct and contracts of British moneyed society, but also takes specific aim at an English judicial system in desperate need of modernization and reform. Featuring the voice of Esther Summerson-Dickens's only female narrator-the story...

Charles Dickens was an English short story writer, dramatist, essayist, and the most popular novelist to come out of the Victorian era. Many of his novels, with their frequent concern for social reform, were first published in magazines in serial form under the pseudonym, Boz. Unlike authors who completed entire novels before serialization, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialized. The continuing popularity of his novels and...

Fully entitled "Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty," this novel was Dickens' first attempt at a historical novel. As such, it is the precursor to his more famous "A Tale of Two Cities", in which his exploration of mob violence, and especially the effect of public events on individual lives, becomes apparent. This work centers on Barnaby Rudge, a mentally simple son, and his loving mother, who are a part of the small village of Epping Forest,...

David Copperfield, whose stepfather casts him out after the death of David's mother, lives through trials and tribulations, first at a boys' school and then as a young man in London before he goes to live with his great-aunt and eventually finds happiness.

The final, unfinished novel of Charles Dickens that is in many ways his most intriguing—a gripping, haunting masterpiece that foreshadows the detective stories of Conan Doyle and the nightmarish novels of Kafka.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a highly atmospheric tale of murder. Central to the plot is John Jasper: in public he is a man of integrity and benevolence; in private he is an opium addict....

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";...

Thomas Gradgrind, a practical man, brings up his two children, Louisa and Tom, accordingly, thoroughly suppressing the imaginative and emotional sides of their natures with devastating consequences.

Our hero confronts a large and varied cast, including Wackford Squeers, the fantastic ogre of a schoolmaster, and Vincent Crummles, the grandiloquent ham actor, on his comic and satirical adventures up and down the country. Punishing wickedness, befriending the helpless, strutting the stage, and falling in love, Nicholas shares some of his creator's energy and earnestness as he faces the pressing issues of early Victorian society.--Publisher's description....

Ingeniously conceived and brilliantly rendered, and set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush, The Wreck of the Golden Mary is a masterpiece of Victorian storytelling. En route to making their fortunes, the passengers of the Golden Mary suffer a terrifying ordeal when their vessel collides with an iceberg. Now the helpless victims of a shipwreck, they turn to the restorative powers of storytelling in a desperate attempt to raise morale....