Charles Dickens

"Dickens' unforgettable characters are exuberantly made flesh." London Times

An abridged version of the adventures of the orphan boy who is forced to practice thievery and live a life of crime in nineteenth-century London.

Christmas, for Charles Dickens, was a magical time, when people opened ‘shuttered-up hearts’, and let the threads of their lives become entangled with their fellowman. It inspired some of his finest and most memorable writing, together with many unforgettable characters. Christmas Stories is a collection of sketches and tales of the first order. This was Dickens’ own miscellany, complete with a host of the most pleasant villains, heroic children, tyrants and, of course, a ghost. This volume captures all the excitement and sparkle of a very special time of year.

A Charles Dickens classic.

En riktigt god jul... blir det till slut i Charles Dickens En Julsaga. Men vägen dit är inte den vanliga. Med hjälp av övernaturliga krafter får den rike och elaka affärsmannen Scrooge en läxa, som på juldagsnatten förvandlar honom till en riktigt god människa. Charles Dickens skrev sin historia inför julen 1843. Den blev omedelbart en stor framgång och har sedan dess haft en central roll i det anglosaxiska julfirandet. Berättelsen har även satts upp som julspel på teatrar i England och USA otaliga gånger. Arne Weise har under flera decennier haft en central plats i en stor del av det svenska folkets julfirande som programvärd i SVT. Här har han, med sin karakteristiska röst och inlevelseförmåga, lyckats skapa julstämning i ljudboksformat.

A gritty adaptation of Dickens' least sentimental love story with a cast of some of his most unforgettable characters. Whilst at his parents' graveside, Pip is accosted by Magwitch, a convict escaped from one of the prison ships. Terrified, he is forced to help the man to get away. An unexpected invitation to the house of rich old Miss Havisham forces him into the path of her beautiful, cruel niece Estella and their strange, ruthless games. After an anonymous benefactor grants him a small fortune, Pip turns his back on his humble life as a blacksmith's apprentice – he moves to London to become a gentleman in the hopes of winning Estella. But he has no idea of the dangers that await him there, or from where his salvation will come. This adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, by Nick Ormerod and Declan Donnellan, was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in 2005.

The first of Dickens's historical novels, Barnaby Rudge, written in 1841, is set at the time of the anti-Catholic riots of 1780, with the real Lord George Gordon, leader of the riots, appearing in the book. The characters are caught up in the resulting mob lawlessness which climaxes in the destruction of Newgate prison, an actual event brought to life in the novel. The plot turns on the relationship between Catholic Emma and Protestant Edward, further complicated by the earlier murder of Reuben Haredale, supposedly by Barnaby though actually by his evil father; but the real focus of the book, as so often in Dickens, is London itself. This is a nightmarishly vivid picture ofa capital city's subterranean life. In A Tale of Two CitiesDickens was to recapture his vision of the mob in all its moods, but he never surpassed the sense of pulsating energy and dangerevoked in thecrowd scenes of Barnaby Rudge. Nor did he often rival the touching relationship between Barnaby and his pet raven, Grip, who embodies the mystical powerof innocence. Although Barnaby Rudge is one of Dickens's lesser known novels, the bond between boy and bird makes it one of his most touching.

Charles Dickens's famous second novel recounts the story of a boy born in the workhouse and raised in an infant farm as he tries to make his way in the world. Intended to raise feeling against the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 (which had emphasized the workhouse as an appropriate means of dealing with the problem of poverty), Oliver Twist also provides a sweeping portrait of London life in the 1830s-including the life of the criminal elements in society. Oliver Twist was first published in serialised form (with illustrations by George Cruikshank) in Bentley's Miscellany between February 1837 and April 1839. It was issued with some corrections and revisions in ten numbers in 1846 by Bradbury and Evans (which then also issued the same text in a single volume). Each of these ten numbers, including the Cruikshank illustrations and the advertisements, is included in this facsimile reprint of the 1846 edition. This is one of a series from Broadview Press of facsimile reprint editions-editions that provide readers with a direct sense of these works as the Victorians themselves experienced them.