Charles Dickens

During the French Revolution a young English lawyer goes to the guillotine to save a French aristocrat, husband of the woman he loves. "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times..." With these famous words, Charles Dickens plunges the reader into the French Revolution. From the storming of the Bastille to the relentless drop of the guillotine, Dickens vividly captures the terror and upheaval of that tumultuous period. At the center is the...

Born and raised in the appalling deprivation of a Victorian-era London workhouse, the orphan Oliver escapes the drudgery of apprenticeship only to fall into the hands of the notorious Fagin and his gang of child thieves. But Oliver is an innocent at heart and the attempts by Fagin and the impudently witty Artful Dodger to teach the boy the trick of the pick-pocket's trade lead only to his almost immediate capture. Oliver's rescue by the kindly Mr....

Charles Dickens called his novel David Copperfield, his "favorite child," and wiser than most parents or authors in his choice of a favorite; always in favor of the most prolonged effort, David Copperfield came to him quickly. The story bore him irresistibly along, and he was probably never less harassed by interruptions and breaks in his narrative, says Mr. Forster. Yet Dickens made the book his favorite, agreeing, probably, with the majority of...

"When it comes to walking the mean streets, Dickens could give modern genre authors the tour of their lives." -Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times When a corpse is found in the Thames River and identified as John Harmon, many lives will be forever changed. John, who had been abroad and estranged from his miserly father for years, will no longer collect his inheritance. It will instead go to the miser's employees, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, transforming...

Retired business man, Samuel Pickwick and the other members of the Pickwick Club embark on a series of comic adventures in late Georgian England.

This annotated edition includes: Author Biography and Images. Nicholas Nickleby or The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (or also The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Containing a Faithful Account of the Fortunes, Misfortunes, Uprisings, Downfallings, and Complete Career of the Nickleby Family) is a novel by Charles Dickens originally published as a serial from 1838 to 1839. It was Dickens's third novel. The story centres...

A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and suggest his future. "This text preserves the irregularities in spelling and punctuation of the first edition of 1843."

Amy Dorrit's (Claire Foy) gentle spirit has never been dampened by the confining walls of the Marshalsea Prison she's lived in her whole life. Despite the dark shadow of debtor's prison, Amy lovingly cares for her father William Dorrit (Tom Courtenay), the longest serving inmate. A possibly redemptive light unexpectedly shines in the form of Arthur Clennam (Matthew Macfadyen), who has been left with the intriguing threads of a mystery after his father's...

John Jasper is haunted and restless. Unhappily settled as choirmaster in the provincial cathedral town of Cloisterham, Jasper finds himself striving for the divine in his music even as he struggles against madness brought on by ennui and opiates. Aware of his unraveling, Jasper believes his salvation may be found in the arms of Rosa, his prized pupil. His only obstacle is her fiance, Edwin Drood -- Jasper's nephew.