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Charles Dickens

A wealthy merchant devotes his life to a philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his children, Louisa and Tom, according to this philosophy and never allows them to engage in fanciful or imaginative pursuits. As his children grow older, Tom becomes a dissipated, self-interested hedonist, and Louisa struggles with deep inner confusion, feeling as though she is missing something important in her life.

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Victorian Epic

Hard Times

The novel satirises the shortcomings of both government and society, including the institution of debtors' prisons, where debtors were imprisoned, unable to work, until they repaid their debts. The prison in this case is the Marshalsea, where Dickens's own father had been imprisoned. Dickens is also critical of the lack of a social safety net, the treatment and safety of industrial workers, as well the bureaucracy of the British Treasury.

Little Dorrit

The novel tells a story of personal growth and personal development of an orphan nicknamed Pip. Set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century, the novel contains some of Dickens's most memorable scenes, including the opening in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict, Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is full of vivid imagery including poverty, prison ships and chains, fights to the death. It offers a colourful cast of characters who have entered popular culture. These include the eccentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold Estella, and Joe, the unsophisticated and kind blacksmith. Dickens's themes include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil.

Great Expectations

Dombey and Son follows life of Paul Dombey, a wealthy owner of a shipping company. Paul's dream is to have a son to continue his business. His wife dies in childbirth and Paul ends up with a daughter instead of the desired son. The book elaborates on a number of socially significant themes. In particular the book deals with the then-prevalent common practice of arranged marriages for financial gain. Other themes to be detected within this work include social inequality, familial relationships, and as ever in Dickens, betrayal and deceit and the consequences thereof.

Dombey and Son

The novel follows the character David Copperfield, and is written in the first person, as a description of his life until middle age, with his own adventures and the web of friends and enemies he meets along his way. Copperfield finds career success as an author, and is a person of deep emotions. Many elements of the novel follow events in Dickens's own life, and it is often considered his veiled autobiography. It was Dickens' favourite among his own novels.

David Copperfield

The central theme of Bleak House is satirical exposure of the English Chancery court system. Chancery or equity courts were one half of the English civil justice system, existing side-by-side with law courts. Chancery courts heard actions having to do with wills and estates, or with the uses of private property and were notoriously slow and inefficient. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and the story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which came about because someone wrote several conflicting wills. This novel helped support a judicial reform movement, which culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.

Bleak House

A Tale of Two Cities is one of few works of historical fiction by Charles Dickens. The text relies much on The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle as a historical source. Dickens wrote in his Preface to Tale that no one can hope to add anything to the philosophy of Mr. Carlyle's wonderful book. Charles Dickens was a champion of the poor in his life and in his writings. His childhood included some of the pains of poverty in England, as he had to work in a factory as a child to help his family. The reader is shown that the poor are brutalised in France and England alike.

A Tale of Two Cities

Orphaned by his mother's death in childbirth and his father's mysterious absence, Oliver spends the first nine years of his life in the care of Mrs Mann. He is later sent to a workhouse and from there escapes to London. He meets Artful Dodger in London and continues his adventures there. The story is an example of Dickens' social novel satirising the hypocrisies of his time, including child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children.

Oliver Twist

Dickens wrote this book for his own children trying to cultivate interest in both history and literature. A Child's History was included in the curricula of British schoolchildren for more than a hundred years, well into the 20th century.

A Child's History of England

Like most of Dickens's early works, the novel has a contemporary setting. Much of the action takes place in London, with several chapters taking place in Dickens's birthplace of Portsmouth, as well as settings in Yorkshire and Devon. Nickleby is the first of Dickens's romances, an immediate and complete success establishing Dickens's lasting reputation. Mr Ralph Nickleby's first visit to his poor relations Nicholas Nickleby's father dies unexpectedly after losing all of his money in a poor investment. Nicholas, his mother and his younger sister, Kate, are forced to give up their comfortable lifestyle in Devonshire and travel to London to seek the aid of their only relative.

Nicholas Nickleby

Barnaby Rudge is Dickens' first historical novel set in revolutionary times similarly to his other historical text A Tale of Two Cities. Barnaby Rudge, a simpleton, wanders in and out of the story with his pet raven, Grip. Barnaby's mother begins to receive visits from the ill-kempt stranger, whom she feels compelled to protect. She later gives up the annuity she had been receiving from Geoffrey Haredale and, without explanation, takes Barnaby and leaves the city hoping to escape the unwanted visitor.

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