Hablot Knight Browne
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Few first novels have created as much popular excitement as The Pickwick Papers?-a comic masterpiece that catapulted its 24-year-old author to immediate fame. Readers were captivated by the adventures of the poet Snodgrass, the lover Tupman, the sportsman Winkle &, above all, by that quintessentially English Quixote, Mr Pickwick, & his cockney Sancho Panza, Sam Weller. From the hallowed turf of Dingley Dell Cricket Club to the unholy fracas of the...
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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...
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Little Nell Trent lives in the quiet gloom of the old curiosity shop with her ailing grandfather, for whom she cares with selfless devotion. But when they are unable to pay their debts to the stunted, lecherous and demonic money-lender Daniel Quilp, the shop is seized and they are forced to flee, thrown into a shadowy world in which there seems to be no safe haven. Dickens's portrayal of the innocent, tragic Nell made The Old Curiosity Shop an instant...
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The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (Martin Chuzzlewit) was serialized between 1843 and 1844, and is considered to be one of Charles Dickens's last picaresque novels. Raised by his grandfather and namesake, Martin Chuzzlewit is disinherited after revealing his love for his nursemaid, Mary. With no fortune, Martin apprentices himself to the greedy architect Seth Pecksniff and befriends Tom Pinch. Although Dickens considered Martin Chuzzlewit...
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David Copperfield enjoys an idyllic life with his gentle, widowed mother and his loving nurse, Peggotty. Then tragedy strikes when Mr. Murdstone weds David's mother and drives her to an early grave. Despised by his stepfather, the boy is forced to live in misery and poverty until he runs away to throw himself upon the mercy of his eccentric aunt. Charles Dickens's classic tale of growing up.
7) Bleak House
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Bleak House is one of Dickens' finest achievements, establishing his reputation as a serious and mature novelist, as well as a brilliant comic writer. It is at once a complex mystery story that fully engages the reader in the work of detection, and an unforgettable indictment of an indifferent society. Its representations of a great city's underworld, and of the law's corruption and delay, draw upon the author's personal knowledge and experience....
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A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens's great historical novel, set against the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author's novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores...