Charles Dickens

The 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 mannish lawyer...

Four bumbling members of a nineteenth-century London social club, known as the legendary Pickwick Club, journey to places outside the city and become involved in romantic foibles, danger, and a few legal scrapes.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood was left unsolved when Charles Dickens died the day after completing the sixth of twelve planned serial installments. Orphans Edwin Drood and Rosa Bud, who had been betrothed by their parents to marry when Edwin turned twenty-one, mutually agree to break the engagement. Edwin mysteriously disappears, and the story ends before we know his fate.--back cover.

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."

David Copperfield enjoys an idyllic life with his gentle, widowed mother and his loving nurse, Peggotty. Then tragedy strikes when Mr. Murdstone weds David's mother and drives her to an early grave. Despised by his stepfather, the boy is forced to live in misery and poverty until he runs away to throw himself upon the mercy of his eccentric aunt. Charles Dickens's classic tale of growing up.