Charles Dickens

The classic Christmas story by Charles Dickens, the original text reprinted in an easy to read font. An ideal present for GCSE English reader. The second greatest Christmas story ever told

Ebenezer Scrooge has always hated Christmas, but in this particular Eve, he's given another reason to be wary of the holiday: the ghost of Jacob Marley comes to visit Clad in heavy chains and burdensome weights, Marley's ghost warns Scrooge that three spirits will visit him over the next three nights, each with a ghastly story to share. Will Scrooge's ghoulish experience teach him to embrace the spirit of Christmas, or will he say bah humbug to the holidays for the last time?

Este libro narra la inquietante noche que en la v spera de esta festividad pasa Ebenezer Scrooge, un anciano miserable y taca o que es una de las m s acabadas representaciones del avaro en la historia de la literatura y otro de los inolvidables personajes de la amplia galer a de Dickens. La visita del espectro de su antiguo socio, Jacob Marley, hace desfilar ante Scrooge la visi n de los esp ritus de las Navidades pasadas, presentes y futuras intentando conmover su coraz n. Algo va a cambiar. Con este tierno relato, el autor se propuso remover las conciencias de sus lectores y convencerlos de la necesidad de ser bondadosos y de practicar la caridad en un mundo injusto. La caricatura, la inquietud social y el sentimiento conseguidos por Charles Dickens en esta narraci n, hacen que mantenga intacta a n hoy su capacidad para conmover y hacer disfrutar.

The tale begins on a "cold, bleak, biting" Christmas Eve exactly seven years after the death of Scrooge's business partner Jacob Marley. Scrooge, an old miser, is established within the first stave as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner " He hates Christmas, calling it "humbug"; he refuses his nephew Fred's Christmas dinner invitation, and rudely turns away two gentlemen who seek a donation from him to provide a Christmas dinner for the poor. His only "Christmas gift" is allowing his overworked, underpaid clerk Bob Cratchit Christmas Day off with pay - which he does only to keep with social custom, Scrooge considering it "a poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every 25th of December " At home that night, Scrooge is visited by Marley's ghost, who is forever cursed to wander the earth dragging a network of heavy chains, forged during a lifetime of greed and selfishness. Dickens describes the apparition thus: "Marley's face ... had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar." Marley has a bandage under his chin, tied at the top of his head; "... how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast "

The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman is a classic English poem by the great English writers, Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. In some collection of old English Ballads there is an ancient ditty which I am told bears some remote and distant resemblance to the following Epic Poem. I beg to quote the emphatic language of my estimable friend (if he will allow me to call him so), the Black Bear in Piccadilly, and to assure all to whom these presents may come, that "_I_ am the original." This affecting legend is given in the following pages precisely as I have frequently heard it sung on Saturday nights, outside a house of general refreshment (familiarly termed a wine vaults) at Battle-bridge.

A Message from the Sea is a classic nautical short story from Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins in which a sea captain finds a bottle with a note that reveals the criminal acts of a stranded dying man.

This reader is accompanied with a CD that contains the full audio of the text in MP3 format. Oliver’s mother dies when he is born and he is brought up in a workhouse. His first years are cold and lonely – and then he runs away to London. But he falls into the hands of Fagin and the terrifying Bill Sykes. They try to turn Oliver into a criminal. Will he escape to find a better life?

When the publishers of the Pickwick Papers, Chapman & Hall, brought out the anonymous ‘Sketches of Young Ladies’ in 1837, their resounding success prompted the twenty-six-year old Dickens to write, the following year, a companion piece, the ‘Sketches of Young Gentlemen’, followed two years later – to coincide with the engagement of Princess Victoria and Prince Albert – by the ‘Sketches of Young Couples’. First published in a single volume in 1843, and including the iconic original engravings by Phiz, these satirical portraits not only reveal the dazzling brilliance of young Dickens’s genius, but also offer a humorous glimpse into Victorian mores and attitudes.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood was Charles Dickens final novel, and remained unfinished at the time of his death. In this edition, beloved children's author Leon Garfield gives the story a satisfying ending.

Unabridged & Original version Includes: 15 Illustrations and Biography Great Expectations is Charles Dickens's thirteenth novel and his penultimate completed novel; a bildungsroman which depicts the personal growth and personal development of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It is Dickens's 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. It is set among marshes in Kent, and in London, in the early to mid-1800s, and contains some of Dickens' most memorable scenes, including the opening, in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict, Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is full of extreme imagery - poverty; prison ships and chains, and fights to the death - and has a colourful cast of characters who have entered popular culture. These include the eccentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold Estella, and Joe, the kind and generous blacksmith. Dickens's themes include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil. Great Expectations is popular both with readers and literary critics, and has been translated into many languages, and adapted numerous times into various media. Upon its release, the novel received near universal acclaim. Thomas Carlyle spoke disparagingly of "all that Pip's nonsense". Later, George Bernard Shaw praised the novel, as "All of one piece and consistently truthfull." During the serial publication, Dickens was pleased with public response to Great Expectations and its sales; when the plot first formed in his mind, he called it "a very fine, new and grotesque idea". As Dickens began writing Great Expectations, he undertook a series of hugely popular and remunerative reading tours. His domestic life had disintegrated in the late 1850s however, and he had separated from his wife, Catherine Dickens. He was keeping secret an affair with a much younger woman, Ellen Ternan. It has been suggested that the reluctance with which Ellen Ternan became his mistress is reflected in the icy teasing of Estella in Great Expectations.