Charles Dickens
" Like so many fond parents I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child," wrote Charles Dickens. "And his name is David Copperfield."
Of all of Dickens's novels, David Copperfield most closely reflects the events of his own life. The story of an abandoned waif who discovers life...
5) Oliver Twist
Oliver is an orphan living on the dangerous London streets with no one but himself to rely on. Fleeing from poverty and hardship, he falls in with a criminal street gang who will not let him go, however hard he tries to escape.
One of the most swiftly moving and unified of Charles Dickens’s great novels, Oliver Twist is also famous for its re-creation–through the splendidly realized figures of Fagin, Nancy, the Artful Dodger,
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....
7) Hard times
“Facts alone are wanted in life.” The children at Mr. Gradgrind’s school are sternly ordered to stifle their imaginations and pay attention only to cold, hard reality. The effects of Gradgrind’s teaching on his own children, Tom and Louisa, are particularly profound and leave them ill-equipped to deal with the unpredictable desires of the human heart. Luckily for them, they have a friend in Sissy Jupe, the child of a circus
...Beautiful, honest Nell Trent lives with her devoted Grandfather in his Old Curiosity Shop, an enchanting shop of odds and ends. Desperate to make a better life for his Nell, Grandfather secretly gambles and gets deeply into debt with the unscrupulous Quilp. When what little money they have is lost in a game of cards, Quilp claims The Old Curiosity Shop as payment for the loans
Released in installments from 1840 to 1841, Charles Dicken's The
...