Charles Dickens

Oliver is an orphan living on the dangerous London streets with no one but himself to rely on. Fleeing from poverty and hardship, he falls in with a criminal street gang who will not let him go, however hard he tries to escape. One of the most swiftly moving and unified of Charles Dickens's great novels, Oliver Twist is also famous for its re-creation-through the splendidly realized figures of Fagin, Nancy, the Artful Dodger, and the evil Bill Sikes-of...

"When it comes to walking the mean streets, Dickens could give modern genre authors the tour of their lives." -Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times When a corpse is found in the Thames River and identified as John Harmon, many lives will be forever changed. John, who had been abroad and estranged from his miserly father for years, will no longer collect his inheritance. It will instead go to the miser's employees, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, transforming...

Fully entitled "Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty," this novel was Dickens' first attempt at a historical novel. As such, it is the precursor to his more famous "A Tale of Two Cities", in which his exploration of mob violence, and especially the effect of public events on individual lives, becomes apparent. This work centers on Barnaby Rudge, a mentally simple son, and his loving mother, who are a part of the small village of Epping Forest,...

When David Copperfield's widowed mother remarries, David suffers from his stepfather's abuse. At age 8, David is sent away to a harsh school where the principal routinely beats the students. David's circumstances become even worse when he is removed from school and, at age 10, forced to labor from morning to night in a London warehouse. David then decides to take desperate action. He will run away to his great-aunt, who lives in Dover. Having never...

The sensational bestselling story of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, seems to belong less to the history of the Victorian novel than to folklore, fairy tale, or myth. The sorrows of Nell and her grandfather are offset by Dickens's creation of a dazzling contemporary world inhabited by some of his most brilliantly drawn characters-the eloquent ne'er-do-well Dick Swiveller; the hungry maid known as the "Marchioness";...

This theatrical and spirited version of A Christmas Carol puts the phantasmagoric qualities of Dickens's classic tale center stage. A swirling, dancing chorus of ghosts weaves through this uplifting holiday story of redemption, magic and hope.

"History of England..." is an (20 p.) historical satire produced by 16-year-old Jane Austen. It is a spoof on the history of the British monarchy from 1399 to 1649. What you find are brief, opinionated pieces, ranging from two sentences on Edward V who "lived so little a while that nobody had time to draw his picture" to 19 sentences on Elizabeth, of whom "It was the peculiar misfortune . . . to have had bad ministers --since wicked as she herself...

The miserly Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, who show him the error of his ways.