Charles Dickens

"Considered by many to be Dickens' finest novel, Great Expectations traces the growth of the book's narrator, Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man with depth of character. From its famous dramatic opening on the bleak Kentish marshes, the story abounds with some of Dickens' most memorable characters. Among them are the kindly blacksmith Joe Gargery, the mysterious convict Abel Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Havisham and her beautiful...

Oliver Twist is a classic tale of a boy of unknown parentage born in a workhouse and brought up under the cruel conditions to which pauper children were posed in Victorian England. With this novel, Dickens created a moral fable about the survival of good.

Gathered round the fire at the Maypole Inn, in the village of Chigwell, on a foul weather evening in the year 1775 were John Willet, proprietor of the Maypole, and his three cronies. One of the three, Soloman Daisy, tells a stranger at the inn a well-known local tale of the murder of Reuben Haredale which had occurred 22 years ago that very day. Reuben had been owner of the Warren, an estate in the area, now the residence of the deceased Reuben's...

An old man recalls the different stages of his life as a journey that he shares with his grandchildren.

"A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, and The Cricket on the Hearth" contains three of Charles Dickens most popular Christmas-time stories. In "A Christmas Carol" we have the classic story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly old man who is visited by ghosts prior to Christmas to show him the error of his ways. In "The Chimes" we have the story of Toby Veck, a poor working-class man who has lost his faith in human nature. On New Year's Eve he is visited by spirits...