Charles Dickens

Great Expectations tells the story of Pip, an English orphan who rises to wealth, deserts his true friends, and becomes humbled by his own arrogance. It also introduces one of the more colorful characters in literature: Miss Havisham. Dickens set Great Expectations during the time that England was becoming a wealthy world power. Machines were making factories more productive, yet people lived in awful conditions. Naïve Pip, creepy Miss Haversham,...

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.

Miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is made to repent of his greedy ways by the timely intervention of the ghost of his dead partner, Jacob Marley, and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.

Oliver Twist: Starved and mistreated, empty bowl in hand, the young hero musters the courage to approach his master, saying, "Please, sir, I want some more." Oliver Twist's famous cry of the heart has resounded with readers since the novel's initial appearance in 1837, and the book remains a popular favorite with fans of all ages. Dickens was no stranger to the pain of hunger and the degradation of poverty. He poured his own youthful experience of...

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."

Dickens' own childhood and youth are reflected in his novel of David Copperfield's early adventures and marriage.