Charles Dickens

David Copperfield is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr. Murdstone; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora; and the magnificently impecunious Micawber, one of literature's...

The cruel world of the early Victorian England. The novel describes the life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, a young man that has to support his family - his mother (a Dickens portrait own mother) and sister - after the death of his father.

In 1844, Charles Dickens embarked on a year-long visit to Italy, where he turned his perceptive views of the human condition toward a thoughtful appraisal of the country's soul and character. Combining travelogue with social commentary, he formed a kaleidoscopic portrait of nineteenth-century Italian life as seen by an outsider. Rather than serving as a guidebook, his "pictures" from Italy entertain rather than instruct. Dickens' eye for detail and...

Five tales written for Christmas, 1843 to 1848, combining realism and fantasy. "A Christmas Carol in Prose" makes its ghostly appeal to Scrooge, the hard old miser, and "The Chimes" is a variation of the same motive. "The Cricket on the Hearth" is an idyll of home life, "The Battle of Life", an imaginative deliverance on resignation, "The Haunted Man", a fairy tale with the beauty of kindness for its moral.

Includes the favorite redemption tale of misanthrope Ebenezer Scrooge as well as such holiday pieces as "The Chimes," "The Cricket on the Hearth," "The Battle of Life" and "The Haunted Man."

Hard Times, Dickens's shortest novel and one of his major triumphs, tells the tragic story of Louisa Gradgrind and her father. No other work of Dickens presents so harsh an indictment against the attitude of life he associated with Utilitarianism. With savage bitterness Dickens exposes the devilish industries and institutions that exploited the bodies and minds of the vulnerable labor class.

A collection of four Christmas stories by the nineteenth-century English writer, including "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton."