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Charles Dickens

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Considered by many to be the greatest novelist of the English language, Charles John Hummham Dickens was born Feb 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England. Some of his most popular works include Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.
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Considered by many to be the greatest novelist of the English language, Charles John Hummham Dickens was born Feb 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England. Some of his most popular works include Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.
Books by thisAuthor
  • Supernatural Short Stories

    Supernatural Short Stories
    The only single-volume edition in print of Dickens's tales of the supernatural, enriched with pictures and additional material on his life and works Charles Dickens wrote a number of supernatural and horror stories, some of which were included in his longer works, while others were published in magazines. This collection gathers them together in one volume, providing an invaluable insight into the author's storytelling apprenticeship and his steady growth towards excellence. As well as offering a further dimension to the world of his better-known masterpieces, these tales, from "A Madman's Manuscript" to "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton" to the celebrated "The Signalman," illustrate Dickens's well-known love of a spooky story told around a blazing fire, the pastime of a bygone age to be rediscovered for our own delight.

    Poems

    Poems
    A rare collection of Dickens's poetry, ideal for Dickens enthusiasts He has turned from his farm! From his home he has cast The old man who has tilled it for years; Though each tree and flower is linked with the past, And a friend of his childhood appears. While Charles Dickens is best known and celebrated for his prolific journalistic output and novelistic creations, he also devoted some of his creative energies to verse. At turns sentimental, melancholy, playful, humorous, and satirical, and ranging considerably in tone and format, from songs to narrative prologues for novels and "squibs" for newspapers, the poems in this collection highlight Dickens's gift for language and his unfailing power to touch.

    A Tale of Two Cities

    A Tale of Two Cities
    ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP Dickens's epic novel of freedom, love, and the burning chaos of the French Revolution. EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: • A concise introduction that gives readers important background information • A chronology of the author's life and work • A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context • An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations • Detailed explanatory notes • Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work • Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction • A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential. SERIES EDITED BY CYNTHIA BRANTLEY JOHNSON

    A Christmas Carol

    A Christmas Carol
    On Christmas Eve, Scrooge sits in his house with not a kind word for anyone; he just wants to be left alone until the “humbug” of Christmas is over. But four ghostly visitors—his former business partner, followed by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come—show him the error of his ways, and by the time Christmas Day dawns, Scrooge is a changed person.

  • Oliver Twist

    Oliver Twist
    Tor Classics are affordably-priced editions designed to attract the young reader. Original dynamic cover art enthusiastically represents the excitement of each story. Appropriate "reader friendly" type sizes have been chosen for each title—offering clear, accurate, and readable text. All editions are complete and unabridged, and feature Introductions and Afterwords. This edition of Oliver Twist includes a Foreword, Biographical Note, and Afterword by Nancy Springer. Abandoned at an early age, Oliver Twist is forced to live in a dark and dismal London workhouse lorded over by awful Mr. Bumble who cheats the boys of their meager rations! Desperate but determined, Oliver makes his escape. But what he discovers in the harsh streets of London's underworld makes the workhouse look like a picnic. Penniless and alone, he is lured into a world of crime by the wily Fagin--the nefarious mastermind of a gang of pint-sized pickpockets. Will a life of crime pay off for young Oliver? Or will it earn him a one-way ticket to the gallows?

    Great Expectations

    Great Expectations
    From A to Z, the Penguin Drop Caps series collects 26 unique hardcovers—featuring cover art by type superstar Jessica Hische It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps, a new series of twenty-six collectible and gift-worthy hardcover editions, each with a type cover showcasing a gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet by superstar type designer Jessica Hische, whose work has appeared everywhere from Tiffany & Co. to Wes Anderson's film Moonrise Kingdom to Penguin's own bestsellers Committed and Rules of Civility. A collaboration between Jessica Hische and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley,  the series design encompasses foil-stamped paper-over-board cases in a rainbow-hued spectrum across all twenty-six book spines and a decorative stain on all three paper edges. Penguin Drop Caps debuts with an “A” for Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a “B” for Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and a “C” for Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, and continues with more classics from Penguin. D is for Dickens. The orphan Pip is destined to become a blacksmith like his brother-in-law Joe. But when Pip meets the beautiful Estella Havisham, he yearns for a gentleman’s education in order to woo her. A mysterious legacy answers his ambition, and changes the course of his life, taking him far from the Marshes of youth—far, so he thinks, from his early terrifying encounter with an escaped convict, and his sister’s class resentments. In this fictional autobiography, Pip’s coming-of-age story becomes representative of the changing social landscape of nineteenth century England. As Pip’s education provides upward social mobility, he must also learn hard lessons about self-delusion and forgiveness, love and loss, and the true nature of his Great Expectations.

    David Copperfield

    David Copperfield
    David Copperfield follows the story of a young boy who is born into poverty, later sent to a boarding school, and eventually ends up in London, where he encounters a varied cast of characters and blossoms out of his miserable childhood into a life as a successful novelist.

    Our Mutual Friend

    Our Mutual Friend
    A satiric masterpiece about the allure and peril of money, Our Mutual Friend revolves around the inheritance of a dust-heap where the rich throw their trash. When the body of John Harmon, the dust-heap’s expected heir, is found in the Thames, fortunes change hands surprisingly, raising to new heights “Noddy” Boffin, a low-born but kindly clerk who becomes “the Golden Dustman.” Charles Dickens’s last complete novel, Our Mutual Friend encompasses the great themes of his earlier works: the pretensions of the nouveaux riches, the ingenuousness of the aspiring poor, and the unfailing power of wealth to corrupt all who crave it. With its flavorful cast of characters and numerous subplots, Our Mutual Friend is one of Dickens’s most complex—and satisfying—novels.

  • Little Dorrit

    Little Dorrit
    Coming to PBS in March 2009-a MasterpieceTM Classic production of Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit Charles Dickens 's great satire on poverty, riches, and imprisonment, Little Dorrit is the story of Arthur Clennam, a man whose kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother's seamstress, assures him nothing but trouble. Her father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, has long been imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is a supreme work of Dickens's maturity.

    The Old Curiosity Shop

    The Old Curiosity Shop
    Wildly popular at the time of its publication, The Old Curiosity Shop is the story of Little Nell Trent, a young orphan who lives with her grandfather in his London curiosity shop until a turn of fortune forces them onto the street and into the English countryside to beg for food and shelter. Pursued by Dick Swiveller and Quilp, Nell and her grandfather find refuge in a remote village, but at considerable cost to Nell’s health. The Old Curiosity Shop was originally published as a serial in 1841, generating unprecedented excitement around the fate of Nell and her grandfather. The Old Curiosity Shop has been adapted for film, television and the stage. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

    American Notes for General Circulation

    American Notes for General Circulation
    Revised Edition
    Charles Dickens was the most famous of many travelers of his time who journeyed to America, curious about the revolutionary new civilization that had captured the English imagination. His frank, often humorous descriptions in his 1842 account cover everything from his uncomfortable sea voyage to an ecstatic narrative of his visit to Niagara Falls. Yet Dickens is also critical of American society, its preoccupation with money, and reliance on slavery, as well as the rude, unsavory manners of Americans and their corrupt press. Above all, American Notes is a lively chronicle of what was for Dickens an illuminating encounter with the New World.

    The Pickwick Papers

    The Pickwick Papers
    Tor Classics are affordably-priced editions designed to attract the young reader. Original dynamic cover art enthusiastically represents the excitement of each story. Appropriate "reader friendly" type sizes have been chosen for each title—offering clear, accurate, and readable text. All editions are complete and unabridged, and feature Introductions and Afterwords. This edition of The Pickwick Papers includes a Foreword, Biographical Note, and Afterword by Nancy Springer. The Pickwick Club was founded by the most learned minds in London for the purpose of making a scientific tour of the world. Its distinguished members include Mr. Samuel Pickwick, Esq., G.C.M.PC., presiding; Augustus Snodgrass; Nathaniel Winkle; and Tracy Tupman, Esq. Yet no sooner have these gentlemen begun their historic journey than they are set upon by a charming but notorious con man, Alfred Jingle. So begins a series of hilarious misadventures that takes the incorrigibly innocent Pickwicks wandering around England, coming in contact with some of the most colorful and comical characters in all fiction, including Dr. Slammer, Dismal Jemmy Hutley, Job Trotter, Wilkins Flasher, and Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz. This was Dickens' first novel--and remains his funniest and most loved.

  • Charles Dickens

    Charles Dickens
    Bleak House; AChristmas Carol and Other...
    This collection from Everyman’s Library provides the greatest works from one of the literary world’s most legendary authors. Each of Charles Dickens’s masterpieces is filled with compellingly and masterfully written prose, an adept understanding of human nature, and some of literature’s most iconic characters. These beautiful, clothbound classics are essentials for any home library. Titles included: Bleak House A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books David Copperfield Great Expectations Oliver Twist A Tale of Two Cities

    Dombey and Son

    Dombey and Son
    Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens’s story of a powerful man whose callous neglect of his family triggers his professional and personal downfall, showcases the author’s gift for vivid characterization and unfailingly realistic description. As Jonathan Lethem contends in his Introduction, Dickens’s “genius . . . is at one with the genius of the form of the novel itself: Dickens willed into existence the most capacious and elastic and versatile kind of novel that could be, one big enough for his vast sentimental yearnings and for every impulse and fear and hesitation in him that countervailed those yearnings too. Never parsimonious and frequently contradictory, he always gives us everything he can, everything he’s planned to give, and then more.” This Modern Library Paperback Classic was set from the 1867 “Charles Dickens” edition.

    Barnaby Rudge

    Barnaby Rudge
    (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Charles Dickens’s first historical novel–set during the anti-Catholic riots of 1780–is an unparalleled portrayal of the terror of a rampaging mob, seen through the eyes of the individuals swept up in the chaos. Those individuals include Emma, a Catholic, and Edward, a Protestant, whose forbidden love weaves through the heart of the story; and the simpleminded Barnaby, one of the riot leaders, whose fate is tied to a mysterious murder and whose beloved pet raven, Grip, embodies the mystical power of innocence. The story encompasses both the rarified aristocratic world and the volatile streets and nightmarish underbelly of London, which Dickens characteristically portrays in vivid, pulsating detail. But the real focus of the book is on the riots themselves, depicted with an extraordinary energy and redolent of the dangers, the mindlessness, and the possibilities–both beneficial and brutal–of the mob. One of the lesser-known novels, Barnaby Rudge is nonetheless among the most brilliant–and most terrifying–in Dickens’s oeuvre.

    The Mystery of Edwin Drood

    The Mystery of Edwin Drood
    The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a novel that is itself the subject of one of literature’s most enduring mysteries. The story recounts the troubled romance of Rosa Bud and the book’s eponymous character, who later vanishes. Was Drood murdered, and if so by whom? All clues point to John Jasper, Drood’s lugubrious uncle, who coveted Rosa. Or did Drood orchestrate his own disappearance? As Charles Dickens died before finishing the book, the ending is intriguingly ambiguous. In his Introduction, Matthew Pearl illuminates the 150-year-long quest to unravel The Mystery of Edwin Drood and lends new insight into the novel, the literary milieu of 1870s England, and the private life of Charles Dickens. This Modern Library edition includes new endnotes and a full transcript of “The Trial of John Jasper for the Murder of Edwin Drood,” the 1914 mock court case presided over and argued by the likes of G. K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. Now diehard fans, new readers, and armchair detectives have another opportunity to solve the mystery Dickens took to his grave.

  • The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

    The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
    Charles Dickens’s first novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (The Pickwick Papers) is a series of loosely-related stories about Pickwick Club founder Samuel Pickwick, Esquire, and the gentlemen of his acquaintance, including Augustus Snodgrass and Tracy Tupman, and his manservant, Sam Weller. Originally published as a serial between 1836 and 1837, The Pickwick Papers became a publishing phenomenon after the introduction of Sam Weller and inspired bootleg copies, joke books, and other merchandise. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club has been adapted for radio, stage, film, and television, and has figured in other prominent novels like Little Women. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

    Nicholas Nickleby

    Nicholas Nickleby
    Charles Dickens’s third novel, Nicholas Nickleby (or The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby) was first published as a serial from 1838 to 1839. Forced by the untimely death of his father to support his mother, Mrs. Nickleby, and sister, Kate, Nicholas Nickleby encounters characters both great (the Cheeryble brothers) and fearsome (Wackford Squeers), and overcomes adversity to finally find a suitable position, income and love. Nicholas Nickleby is widely acknowledged to be the first of Dickens’s romances, and it was an immediate success on publication, establishing Dickens’s reputation as a skillful storyteller. Peopled with memorable characters like Uncle Ralph, Smike, and Madame Mantalini, Nicholas Nickleby is the work of a skilled writer at his best. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

    The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

    The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
    The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby combines comedy and tragedy in a tale of triumph over adversity, where Nickleby succeeds despite social injustice-a story that mirrors Charles Dickens's own rise from poverty to great success.

    Master Humphrey¿s Clock

    Master Humphrey¿s Clock
    Charles Dickens, the foremost British writer, is memorable for his interesting characters and rich plots. He was a social activist who wrote plays and novels during the Victorian period. His best known novels include Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and others. . Master Humphrey?s Clock was a weekly periodical edited and written entirely by Charles Dickens from April 4, 1840?December 4, 1841. It began with a frame story in which Master Humphrey tells about himself and his small circle of friends. Master Humphrey was a lonely man who lived in London. He kept old manuscripts in an antique grandfather?s clock by the chimney-corner. He decided that he would start a club, called Master Humphrey's Clock, where the members would read aloud their manuscripts to the others.

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