"In the figure of the half-starved Oliver in the workhouse asking for 'more', Dickens created the nineteenth century's most famous image of protest against cruelty. Yet Oliver Twist develops from a topical satire on the inhumanity of the New Poor Law into something greater. What unfolds is a powerful and violent struggle between Good and Evil, as Oliver becomes ensnared in the labyrinth of London and the nightmare world of Fagin. With its macabre...

"Thomas Gradgrind is the guiding luminary of the Coketown school, stern proponent of the Philosophy of Fact, whose ill-conceived idealism blinds him to the essential humanity of those around, with calamitous results. His daughter Louisa becomes trapped in a loveless marriage and falls prey to an idle seducer, and her brother Tom is ruined thanks to their father's pet theories. Meanwhile Sleary's circus offers a vision of escape and entertainment,...

"No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid loves me, no waiter worships me, no boots admires and envies me." Let the character of The Uncommercial Traveller take you on a journal through Britain, Europe and America, into pubs, workhouses and graveyards to meet tramps, lawyers and everyone in between. These sketches, which Charles Dickens wrote late in life, are based on his own travel experiences. In true Dickensian form it is apparent...

'The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby' is a sprawling adventure that follows young Nicholas' journey across England to defend his family's honour and regain their lost fortune. After the death of Nicholas' father, the Nickleby family is on the brink of collapse, and they must rely on their treacherous uncle Ralph to survive. Nicholas is sent to work at a Yorkshire school but quickly learns that it is run by belligerent ghouls. After a violent...

From the mysterious Druids and noble King Alfred to the notorious Henry VIII and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Charles Dickens traced his country's history for the benefit of young Victorians. Written with the beloved storyteller's customary panache, this series of historical vignettes reads like a fast-paced novel, rich in anecdotes and colorful stories. Dickens' unsparing, witty, and opinionated perspectives on the great pageant of English history...

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was the most popular novelist to come from the Victorian era. Dickens' began by writing serials for magazines, and from 1833-1836 he used the pseudonym Boz, taken from a childhood nickname for his younger brother. "Sketches by Boz" contains 56 stories and, like most of Dickens' work, vividly portrayed the lives of Londoners around him in an effort to illustrate social injustices and promote reform. Unlike less successful...

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";...

The author's first novel, comprising a sequence of loosely related adventures of the Pickwickians as they explore the nooks and crannies and encounter the characters of early nineteenth century England.

'A Christmas Carol' has gripped the public imagination since it was first published in 1843, and it is now as much a part of Christmas as mistletoe or plum pudding. This edition reprints the story alongside Dickens's four other Christmas Books: 'The Chimes', 'The Cricket on the Hearth', 'The Battle of Life', and 'The Haunted Man'. All five stories show Dickens at his unpredictable best, jumbling together comedy and melodrama, genial romance and urgent...

The "No Popery" or Gordon Riots of 1780 include orgies and fires and Lord George Gordon as a major figure.