Charles Dickens
1) Oliver Twist
Author
Language
English
Description
Charles Dickens' classic story of a young boy who seeks his fortune on the streets of London. After Oliver Twist asks nasty Mr Bumble for more food, he has to flee the workhouse for the streets of London. Here he meets the Artful Dodger, who leads him to Fagin and his gang of pickpockets. When a thieving mission goes wrong, Oliver narrowly avoids prison and finds himself in the care of kind Mr Brownlow. But Fagin and the brutal Bill Sikes go in search...
Author
Language
English
Description
Old Ebenezer Scrooge is too mean to spend money on coals for the fire in his counting-house, where his clerk Bob Cratchit shivers in the winter cold. Declining an invitation to his nephew Fred's Christmas party, and refusing to give money to charity, he is ready for his usual miserly Christmas in his cold, dingy apartment. But that night, the ghost of his dead partner Jacob Marley appears and tells him to expect a visit from three spirits over the...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
When the starving French masses rise in hate to overthrow a corrupt and decadent government, both the guilty and innocent become victims of their frenzied anger. Soon nothing stands in the way of the chilling figure they enlist for their cause - La Guillotine - the new invention for efficiently chopping off heads.
Charles Dickens' compelling portrait of the results of terror and treason, love and supreme sacrifice continues to captivate readers around...
4) Bleak house
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
With their estate entangled in an interminable legal case, the young wards of the court Richard Carstone and Ada Clare are taken into the benevolent care of the kindly John Jarndyce. Ada's companion, the gentle and good-hearted Esther Summerson, is devoted to the old man and, although she loves another, becomes betrothed to him. But behind Esther's supposed orphan past lies a dark secret that leads tragically to deceit, blackmail and murder. And as...
Author
Language
English
Description
As a small boy at Joe Gargery's forge, Pip meets two people who will affect his whole life - an escaped convict he is forced to help, and the eccentric Miss Haversham, whose beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella young Pip adores. But when a secret benefactor pays for him to go to London to become a gentleman, Pip never dreams he will meet the dreadful Magwitch again, nor just how wrong his expectations are.
Author
Language
English
Description
Introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallett Annotation. Dickens set this tale of a selfish, hard-hearted man, the son he favored, and the daughter he slighted, in an England almost prostrate before the storms of change we now call the Industrial Revolution. This is a superb example of Dicken's ability to combine the disparate qualities of a social historian, a theatrical artist, and a poet of the utmost tenderness and insight.
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The 'terrible mistake' was the contemporary utilitarian philosophy, expounded in Hard Times (1854) as the Philosophy of Fact by the hard-headed disciplinarian Thomas Gradgrind. But the novel, Dickens's shortest, is more than a polemical tract for the times; the tragic story of Louisa Gradgrind and her father is one of Dickens's triumphs. When Louisa, trapped in a loveless marriage, falls prey to an idle seducer, the crisis forces her father to reconsider...
Author
Series
Publisher
DK Pub
Pub. Date
1997
Edition
1st American ed.
Physical Desc
64 p. : col. ill. ; 26 cm.
Language
English
Description
A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future. Illustrated notes throughout the text explain the historical background of the story.
Publisher
Walt Disney Home Entertainment
Pub. Date
[2005]
Edition
Anniversary ed.
Physical Desc
1 videodisc (ca. 120 min.) : sd., col. ; 4 3/4 in.
Language
English
Description
Miser Ebenezer Scrooge learns the true meaning of Christmas and reforms his heartless and money-grubbing ways after being visited on Christmas Eve by four ghosts. Anniversary edition.
Publisher
WGBH Boston Video
Pub. Date
c2004
Edition
Fullscreen ed.
Physical Desc
1 videodisc (180 min.) : sd., col. ; 4 3/4 in.
Language
English
Description
A vivid adaptation of Charles Dickens' powerful story of a young orphan boy who is released from his apprenticeship by a mysterious benefactor to be educated in London.
14) Oliver Twist
Series
Publisher
Distributed by Carlton International Media Ltd
Pub. Date
2004
Edition
Full screen.
Physical Desc
3 videodiscs (ca. 360 min.) : sd., col. ; 4 3/4 in.
Language
English
Description
Oliver is a penniless orphan at the Parish Workhouse. After he is forced by the other boys to ask for more food, he is sold as an apprentice to a miserly undertaker. He runs away and is taken in by Fagin, a thief who is in league with a murderous pair determined to see that Oliver never inherits the fortune he deserves. Life twists and turns again for Oliver, landing him in alternately dangerous and hopeful circumstances.
