Charles Dickens

The story traces the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. David was born in Blunderstone, England, in 1820, six months after the death of his father. He spends his early years with his mother and their housekeeper, Peggotty. When he is seven years old his mother marries Edward Murdstone. He is given good reason to dislike his stepfather and has similar feelings for Murdstone's sister Jane, who moves into the house soon afterwards. Murdstone attempts to thrash David for falling behind in his studies. David bites him and soon afterwards is sent away to a boarding school, Salem House, with a ruthless headmaster. He returns home for the holidays to learn that his mother has given birth to a baby boy. Shortly after he returns to Salem House, his mother and her baby die, and he returns home immediately. No one remains to care for David in London, so he decides to run away...

It's a tale of chaos, espionage and adventure set in two famous cities London and Paris prior to, and during, the French Revolution. This backdrop of social upheaval serves as a catalyst for the drama that unfolds in the lives of its main characters. Dr. Manette is incarcerated in the Bastille, France for eighteen years without trial. His daughter Lucie grows up in London, thinking that she is an orphan. But her life changes when her father is released from prison. Charles Darnay is an emigrant who has left France because of his hatred for his family. Charles and Lucie fall in love and marry. But there is another person, the English lawyer Sydney Carton, who loves Lucie with all his heart and will do anything for her sake. A secret about Charles' background eventually causes Charles, the Manettes, and some of their friends to return to France, where mob rule now drives the revolution and threatens to destroy them all....

Oliver is born in a workhouse. His single mother dies in childbirth and leaves him with no one to give him true care or attention, still Oliver thrives, in a certain sense. He grows up in the workhouse, and the horrors of his childhood seem all the worse. Nine-year-old Oliver's situation is so dire, it's a relief when he escapes to London and finds himself trapped in a life of crime At least when he's with the criminal gang of pickpockets, he gets to eat. In London, Oliver is brought into the gang of thieves and trained as a pickpocket. When he goes out on his first job, he runs away and is almost sent to prison. However, the kindness of the person who was robbed, saves him from the terrors of the city gaol, and instead he is taken into the philanthropic gentleman's home. However, as soon as he thinks he is settled, two members of the same gang take him back. Oliver is once again sent out on a job-this time a burglary. The job goes wrong and Oliver is shot and left behind....

Charles Dickens is a much-loved author for his vast and important contributions to English literature. This collection brings together his supernatural short stories, some of which were included in his longer works, and others that originally featured in magazines, including ‘The Bagman’s Story’, ‘The Ghost in the Bride’s Chamber’ and ‘To Be Read at Dusk’, among others. They are all fantastically gripping stories from one of the greatest writers of all-time. Essential collaborations with his acolytes Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell are also included.

Many readers know Victorian England through the writings of Charles Dickens. Not only did Dickens put a face on the era through his memorable characters, he also captured the spirit of his age in entertaining fiction spun from its social concerns and historical events. This literary omnibus brings together three of Dickens’s best-known novels: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Great Expectations. Prolific, energetic, and committed to social change, no other novelist of the time did so much as Charles Dickens to rally his readers to action, and no other writer at any time has created such an extraordinary collection of well-loved novels. Charles Dickens: Three Novels is one of Barnes & Noble’s Collectible Edition classics. Each volume features authoritative texts by the world’s greatest authors in exquisitely designed bonded-leather bindings with distinctive gilt edging and an attractive ribbon bookmark. Decorative, durable, and collectible, these books offer hours of pleasure to readers young and old and are an indispensable cornerstone for any home library.

”The greatest writer of his time.”-Edmund Wilson “One of the great poets of the novel, a genius of his art”-Edgar Johnson ”In Oliver Twist …Dickens attacked English institutions with a ferocity that has never since been approached.”-George Orwell With an incredible cast of characters, and an unvarnished portrayal of the early 1800’s criminal underbelly in Victorian London, Dicken’s second novel is an unforgettable masterpiece of the English language. Oliver Twist begins in a workhouse north of London where a young orphan named Oliver lives a brutal and impoverished life, and is subjected to a series of torments as he is handed off to an undertaker to work as a mourner at funerals. After a succession of maltreatments, Oliver runs away to London for a better life. In London, Oliver unwittingly falls into company of a gang of juvenile pickpockets who are under the spell of the sinister criminal Fagin and makes his home with them. Oliver is mistakenly accused of pickpocketing an older gentleman named Mr. Brownlow and arrested. In the ensuing trial Mr. Brownlow recognizes that Oliver was indeed innocent of the crime and takes him into care at his residence. Just as it appears that his life has improved Oliver is accosted back into the world of Fagin and his band of young miscreants. In the ensuing twists of fate, a great mystery is revealed, and Oliver finally fulfills his retribution. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Oliver Twist is both modern and readable.

David Copperfield is the eighth novel by Charles Dickens. The novel's full title is The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account). It was first published as a serial in 1849-50, and as a book in 1850. The novel features the character David Copperfield, and is written in the first person, as a description of his life until middle age, with his own adventures and the numerous friends and enemies he meets along his way. It is his journey of change and growth from infancy to maturity, as people enter and leave his life and he passes through the stages of his development. It is often described as his masterpiece, "the triumph of the art of Dickens", which marks a turning point in his work, the point of separation between the novels of youth and those of maturity. Though written in the first person, David Copperfield is considered to be more than an autobiography, going beyond this framework in the richness of its themes and the originality of its writing, which makes it a true autobiographical novel. In the words of the author, this novel was "a very complicated weaving of truth and invention". Some elements of the novel follow events in Dickens's own life. It was Dickens' favourite among his own novels. In the preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens wrote, "like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield." Dickens wrote this novel without an outline, unlike the way he wrote Dombey and Son, the previous novel. He wrote chapter summaries after the chapters were completed. Some aspects of the story were fixed in his mind from the start, but others, like the obsession of Mr Dick with Charles I, the profession of David Copperfield as a writer, and the sad fate of Dora, were not decided by Dickens until the serial publications were underway; August 1849, December 1849 and May 1850, respectively, were the dates when those decisions were made. At first glance, the work is modeled in the loose and somewhat disjointed way of "personal histories" that was very popular in the United Kingdom of the 18th century; but in reality, David Copperfield is a carefully structured and unified novel. It begins, like other novels by Dickens, with a rather bleak painting of the conditions of childhood in Victorian England, notoriously when the troublesome children are parked in infamous boarding schools, then he strives to trace the slow social and intimate ascent of a young man who, painfully providing for the needs of his good aunt while continuing his studies, ends up becoming a writer; the story, writes Paul Davis, of "a Victorian everyman seeking self-understanding". The novel has a primary theme of growth and the changes that occur on the way to maturity. In addition, Dickens included many aspects of Victorian Era life that he wanted to highlight or wished to change, which were primarily integrated into the story, using satire as one device. The plight of prostitutes and the attitude of middle class society to them, the status of women in marriage, the rigid class structure, are aspects that he highlighted, while the system for handling criminals, the quality of schools, and the employment of children in the fast-spreading factories of the 19th century were aspects he wished to influence, to change for the better. He, among other authors, achieved success in bringing about changes regarding child labour and schooling for more children up to age 12.

Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy's Progress is Charles Dickens's second novel, and was published as a serial from 1837 to 1839 and released as a three-volume book in 1838, before the serialization ended. The story centres on orphan Oliver Twist, born in a workhouse and sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker. After escaping, Oliver travels to London, where he meets the "Artful Dodger", a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin. Oliver Twist is notable for its unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives, as well as for exposing the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid-19th century. The alternative title, The Parish Boy's Progress, alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, as well as the 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress. In this early example of the social novel, Dickens satirises the hypocrisies of his time, including child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of working as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own experiences as a youth contributed as well. Oliver Twist has been the subject of numerous adaptations for various media, including a highly successful musical play, Oliver , and the multiple Academy Award-winning 1968 motion picture. Disney also put its spin on the novel with the animated film called Oliver & Company in 1988.

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 ward Estella, Pip's good-hearted room-mate Herbert Pocket and the pompous Pumblechook. As Pip unravels the truth behind his own ‘great expectations’ in his quest to become a gentleman, the mysteries of the past and the convolutions of fate through a series of thrilling adventures serve to steer him towards maturity and his most important discovery of all - the truth about himself.

Part of the Chiltern Classics range. In 1843 Charles Dickens took up his pen to begin his ‘ghostly little book’ and so created A Christmas Carol and the mean-spirited Ebenezer Scrooge, one of the most memorable characters in literature. In weaving his enduring story of redemption, Dickens gave the world a tale that delights with every retelling and played a part in shaping the modern idea of Christmas. Chiltern are publishers of exquisitely crafted editions of the world’s finest classic literature. These beautiful books are a perfect mix of tradition and the very latest in printing techniques. With wonderful original, detailed and embossed covers, sparkling gilt edges, cream art paper, ribbon markers and stitched binding they are simply the most beautiful classics ever published.

Never out of print since its initial appearance in 1843, A Christmas Carol has been adapted countless times to the stage, radio, television, film and opera. The selfish miser Scrooge’s name has become synonymous with greed and indifference to the welfare of others. His immortal Christmas eve visitations by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come have become a cultural fixture and a fundamental part of the Christmas Holidays around the world. A Christmas Carol was conceived by the author with the deliberate intent of shaking his audience with an emotional tale designed to inspire compassion and charity toward the disadvantaged, especially children. Scrooge’s surreal, spellbinding journey into the meaning of Christmas, with its climactic insistence that a life lived without love and charity is no life at all, provides readers with one of literature’s finest, most unforgettable entertainments while celebrating the good in humanity and providing the world with the most cherished Christmas story ever written. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of A Christmas Carol is both modern and readable.

A new and beautiful edition of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens first published in 1843 with John Leech's illustrations. Tole Publishing is pleased to offer this classic book with a modern touch. The first illustrator of A Christmas Carol was John Leech and our book contains his illustrations set in the story and printed with the best scans available. They are of print quality, you will not be disappointed in them. Our book also includes...13 more of some of the best illustrations over the years in our Gallery of Illustrations by Arthur Rackman, Frederick Simpson Coburn, A. C. Michael, and Sol Eytinge (added to the end of the book)Easy-to-read text in a beautiful typesetThe original preface by Dickens (not all modern versions contain this)A Christmas Carol is a story about Ebenezer Scrooge's redemption from greed. He is a miser who, before Christmas day, is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and three Christmas spirits: past, present, and future. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kind and loving soul.

Reproduction of the original: The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens by Charles Dickens

Reproduction of the original: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Reproduction of the original: The Cricket On the Hearth by Charles Dickens