Showing results by author "Charles Dickens"" in All Categories

Charles Dickens was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. THE SHORT-TIMERS: Within so many yards of this Covent-garden lodging of mine, as within so many yards of Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul's Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament, the Prisons, the Courts of Justice, all the Institutions that govern the land, I can find must find...

After his childhood is turned upside down, orphan David Copperfield is forced to navigate and survive the brutal world of the industrial poor. He'll cross classes and paths with kindred spirits, extended family, eccentrics, and adversaries. Throughout his journey into adulthood, he'll be befriended, loved, and conspired against. And each evolving adventure - comic, tragic, and romantic, both at home and abroad - will inform the observant young man's success as he becomes a novelist.

The Pickwick Papers was Dickens's first novel. Retired businessman and confirmed bachelor, Mr Samuel Pickwick esquire, embarks on a journey through the English countryside accompanied by three fellow "Pickwickians", Mr. Tupman, Mr. Snodgrass and Mr. Winkle. It is a joy to hear of their misadventures in search of stories and characters of interest and the repeated efforts of the quick-witted Sam Weller (Mr. Pickwicks manservant) to rescue them all from disaster.

For many National Public Radio listeners, it wouldn't be Christmas without hearing Jonathan Winters perform A Christmas Carol. The master comedian brilliantly re-creates Dickens' cast of colorful characters: Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, Jacob Marley's spirit, and the three Christmas ghosts, Past, Present, and Future. His distinctive and charming reading uses a special performing edition prepared by Dickens for his own presentations.

Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman; a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens' second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, Chapman and Hall published the novel in three volumes.

This classic book tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge—a miserable and bitter old man, who is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. The spirits force him to confront his past mistakes, and peek into his bleak future if he doesn’t change his ways. Join our full cast on this immersive fully Sound-Scaped journey, as Scrooge is transformed into a generous and kind-hearted man, embracing the spirit of Christmas and helping those around him.

The Uncommercial Traveller is a collection of literary sketches and reminiscences written by Charles Dickens. In 1859 Dickens founded a new journal called All the Year Round and the Uncommercial Traveller articles would be among his main contributions. He seems to have chosen the title and persona of the Uncommercial Traveller as a result of a speech he gave on the 22 December 1859 to the Commercial Travellers' School London in his role as honorary chairman and treasurer. The persona sits well with a writer who liked to travel, not only as a tourist, but also to research and report what he ...

Great Expectations is hailed as Charles Dickens' masterpiece. A gripping tale of love and loss, aspiration and moral redemption, the story follows the young orphan Xiaomao (Pip) from poverty to a life of unexpected opportunity and wealth. Mandarin Companion is a series of easy-to-listen-to novels in Chinese that are fun to listen to and proven to accelerate language learning.

In this, Dickens' most openly political novel, we discover the terrible human consequences of a ruthlessly materialistic philosophy in the lives of Thomas Gradgrind's family, brought up to believe that only "Facts! Facts! Facts!" have any meaning. Set in Coketown, a typical Lancashire milltown, the novel graphically exposes the truth about Victorian "progress".

Sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge has an emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. The novella met with instant success and critical acclaim. A Christmas Carol has never been out of print and has been adapted to film, opera, and other media.

This novel, Charles Dickens' first, includes letters and manuscripts about the Pickwick Club's activities and romances. The benevolent business man Pickwick and his fellow members Snodgrass the poet, Tupman the lover and Winkle the sportsman, along with loyal valet Samuel Weller are just a few of the characters (or caricatures) who made this book an immediate success.

Here is Charles Dickens' semi-autobiographical tale of a boy who is sent away by his stepfather after his mother dies but manages to overcome many incredible adversities.

Dive into the world of Little Dorrit, one of Charles Dickens’ most profound novels, published in monthly installments between 1855 and 1857. Drawing inspiration from his fathers imprisonment in Marshalsea Prison for debt, Dickens weaves a tale that explores the depths of human experience and societal struggles. The story unfolds in the notorious Marshalsea, where we meet Mr. Dorrit, a long-term inmate, and his daughter Amy, affectionately known as Little Dorrit, who was born within the prison walls. As she grows, her kindness and resilience earn her the respect and love of her fellow inmates...

Published in 1838, Oliver Twist marks Charles Dickens first foray into a realistic portrayal of the grim realities of Londons underbelly and its inhabitants. Through vivid characters and settings, Dickens powerfully illustrates his belief that poverty can lead to crime. The story follows young Oliver, a parish orphan, who has spent his entire short life in a dilapidated orphanage, where food is scarce and kindness is even scarcer. When Oliver bravely asks for more gruel after a meager meal, he shocks the parish board and is quickly sold to a local undertaker for a mere five pounds. This act of...

Written in 1890, the story is a murder mystery in which Edwin Drood is supposedly murdered. The novel investigated the characters in a distinctly Dickensian manner from the suspicious and tormented Jasper to the Reverend Crisparkle to Princess Puffer, the enigmatic Datchery and finally the gravedigger and his obnoxious but perceptive boy assistant. But who is the murderer? We will never know.

Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirizes the social and economic conditions of the era. Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is by far the shortest of Dickens's novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead, the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town.

Filled with an array of comic characters, The Chimes tells the story of Toby Veck, a humble porter whose loses his faith in human nature at the hands of his presumed social superiors but regains it thanks to the spirits of the bells. Like its predecessor, it carries a heartfelt plea for charity and brotherhood and examines such distressing themes as suicide and infanticide as well as the question of whether the poor have any right to live at all.

A breathtaking collection of 80 classic short stories inspired by different locations, people and customs across the globe...

Charles Dickens' absolutely wonderful celebration of holiday spirit and Christmas cheer presents a grand glimpse of Christmas dinner and the jovial characters that reside within every family, everywhere.

Volume 12 begins with Doug Bradley's well-researched insight into the stories and their authors. This is followed by what H. P. Lovecraft considered to be one of his best stories, "The Music of Eric Zann". "The Tool" by W. F. Harvey is a horrifying tale narrated by an inmate of a mental institution. Next Edgar Allan Poe revisits his terrifying fear of being buried alive in "The Premature Burial". Then an eavesdropper overhears five creepy and scary ghost stories in Charles Dickens "To Be Read at Dusk".