Library

A Tale of Two Cities (Everyman's Library (Cloth))

Charles DickensIntroduction by Simon Schama

American Notes

Charles DickensAmerican Notes is the fascinating travel journal of one of 19th century America's most celebrated tourists—Charles Dickens. A lively chronicle of his five-month trip around the United States in 1842, the book records the author's adventures journeying by steamboat and stagecoach as well as his impressions of everything from schools and prisons to table manners and slavery.

Barnaby Rudge (Everyman's Library)

Charles Dickens(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Charles Dickens’s first historical novel–set during the anti-Catholic riots of 1780–is an unparalleled portrayal of the terror of a rampaging mob, seen through the eyes of the individuals swept up in the chaos.

Those individuals include Emma, a Catholic, and Edward, a Protestant, whose forbidden love weaves through the heart of the story; and the simpleminded Barnaby, one of the riot leaders, whose fate is tied to a mysterious murder and whose beloved pet raven, Grip, embodies the mystical power of innocence. The story encompasses both the rarified aristocratic world and the volatile streets and nightmarish underbelly of London, which Dickens characteristically portrays in vivid, pulsating detail. But the real focus of the book is on the riots themselves, depicted with an extraordinary energy and redolent of the dangers, the mindlessness, and the possibilities–both beneficial and brutal–of the mob.

One of the lesser-known novels, Barnaby Rudge is nonetheless among the most brilliant–and most terrifying–in Dickens’s oeuvre.

Bleak House (Everyman's Library (Cloth))

Charles DickensIntroduction by Barbara Hardy

A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books

Charles DickensThe final volume in the Everyman’s Library Charles Dickens collection: the timeless story of everyone’s favorite misanthrope, Ebenezer Scrooge, together with four more of Dickens’s Christmas tales and with Arthur Rackham’s classic illustrations.

No holiday season is complete without the story of tightfisted Mr. Scrooge, of his long-suffering and mild-mannered clerk, Bob Cratchit, of Bob’s kindhearted lame son, Tiny Tim, and of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.

First published in 1843, A Christmas Carol was republished in 1852 in a new edition with four other Christmas stories—The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man. These beloved tales revived the notion of the Christmas “spirit”—and have kept it alive ever since.

David Copperfield (Everyman's Library)

Charles Dickens

Introduction by Michael Slater

Dombey and Son

Charles DickensIntroduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Ghost Stories

Charles DickensThroughout his illustrious writing career, Charles Dickens often turned his hand to fashioning short pieces of ghostly fiction. Even in his first successful work, The Pickwick Papers, you will find five ghost stories, all of which are included in this collection. Dickens began the tradition of the ‘ghost story at Christmas’, and many of his tales in this genre are presented here including the brilliant novella, ‘The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain’, which deserves to be as well-known as A Christmas Carol. While all his supernatural tales aim to chill the spine, they are not without the usual traits of Dickens’ flamboyant style, his subtle wit, biting irony, humorous incidents and moral observations. It is a mixture which makes these stories fascinating and entertaining as well as unsettling. To paraphrase the Fat Boy in The Pickwick Papers: Charles Dickens ‘wants to make your flesh creep’.

This collection brings together all Dickens' ghost stories - twenty in all - including several long tales. Here are chilling histories of coincidence, insanity and revenge.

Illustrated by various artists, with an afterword by David Stuart Davies.

Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Great Expectations

Charles DickensIntroduction by Michael Slater

Hard Times

Charles Dickens“Facts alone are wanted in life.” The children at Mr. Gradgrind’s school are sternly ordered to stifle their imaginations and pay attention only to cold, hard reality. The effects of Gradgrind’s teaching on his own children, Tom and Louisa, are particularly profound and leave them ill-equipped to deal with the unpredictable desires of the human heart. Luckily for them, they have a friend in Sissy Jupe, the child of a circus clown, who retains her warm-hearted, compassionate nature despite the pressures around her.

By 1854, when Hard Times was published, Charles Dickens' magisterial progress as a writer had come to incorporate a many-sided, coherent vision of English society, both as it was and as he wished it to be. Hard Times, a classic Dickensian story of redemption set in a North of England town beset by industrialism, everywhere benefits from this vision - in the trenchancy of its satire, in its sweeping indignation at social injustice, and in the persistent humanity with which its author enlivens his largest and smallest incidents.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Little Dorrit

Charles DickensAmy Dorrit's father is not very good with money. She was born in the Marshalsea debtors' prison and has lived there with her family for all of her twenty-two years, only leaving during the day to work as a seamstress for the forbidding Mrs. Clennam. But Amy's fortunes are about to change: the arrival of Mrs. Clennam's son Arthur, back from working in China, heralds the beginning of stunning revelations not just about Amy but also about Arthur himself.

Martin Chuzzlewit

Charles DickensAt The Center of Martin Chuzzlewit — the novel Angus Wilson called "one of the most sheerly exciting of all Dickens stories" — is Martin himself, very old, very rich, very much on his guard. What he suspects (with good reason) is that every one of Iris close and distant relations. now converging in droves on the country inn where they believe he is dying, will stop at nothing to become the inheritor of Iris great fortune.

Having unjustly disinherited Iris grandson, young Martin, the old fellow now trusts no one but Mary Graham, the pretty girl hired as Iris companion. Though she has been made to understand she will not inherit a penny, she remains old Chuzzlewit's only ally. As the viperish relations and hangers-on close in on him, we meet some of Dickens's most marvelous characters — among them Mr. Pecksniff (whose name has entered the language as a synonym for ultimate hypocrisy and self-importance); the fabulously evil Jonas Chuzzlewit; the strutting reptile Tigg Montague; and the ridiculous, terrible, comical Sairey Gamp.

Reluctantly heading for America in search of opportunity, the penniless young Martin goes west, rides a riverboat, and is overtaken by bad company and mortal danger — while the battle for his grandfather's gold reveals new depths of family treachery, cunning, and ruthlessness. And in scene after wonderful scene of conflict and suspense, of high excitement and fierce and hilarious satire, Dickens's huge saga of greed versus decency comes to its magnificent climax.

Mrs Lirriper

Charles DickensMrs Lirriper is an involving story of people thrown together by chance, that moves from the squalors of Victorian London to the sunnier climes of southern France. Recently widowed, Mrs. Lirriper devotes her energies to attending to the needs of her assorted lodgers; but when a newborn child is abandoned to her care, her responsibilities grow to new levels. She enlists longtime lodger, the Major, into the role of guardian,” and the two develop an increasing affection for the boy. In an effort to entertain the growing lad, they relate the stories of their fellow lodgers, little knowing that they are about to embark on their own real-life tale of impending death, guilty secrets, and mysterious legacies. Charles Dickens is one of England’s most important literary figures. His works enjoyed enormous success in his day and are still regarded as among the most popular and widely read classics of all time.

Nicholas Nickleby

Charles DickensIntroduction by John Carey

Oliver Twist (Everyman's Library)

Charles DickensIntroduction by Michael Slater

Our Mutual Friend (Everyman's Library)

Charles DickensIntroduction by Andrew Sanders

Sketches of Young Gentlemen and Young Couples: With Sketches of Young Ladies by Edward Caswall

Charles DickensPraised by acclaimed biographer Claire Tomalin as "young Dickens at his most playful," this delightful volume showcases two collections of little-known sketches by Dickens, charmingly illustrated by Phiz. Whimsical, satirical, witty and exuberant, the sketches ridicule the behavior of their subjects with perfect comic effect, offering fascinating evidence of a writer learning his craft and refining his style. In his Introduction, Dickens scholar Paul Schlicke discusses the popularity of the sketch mode, and the special qualities of these examples. This unique edition includes Edward Caswall's Sketches of Young Ladies, whose success prompted Dickens to write his own sketches.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Everyman's Library)

Charles Dickens(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Charles Dickens’s final, unfinished novel is in many ways his most intriguing. A highly atmospheric tale of murder, The Mystery of Edwin Drood foreshadows both the detective stories of Conan Doyle and the nightmarish novels of Kafka.

As in many of Dickens’s greatest novels, the gulf between appearance and reality drives the action. Set in the seemingly innocuous cathedral town of Cloisterham, the story rapidly darkens with a sense of impending evil. Central to the plot is John Jasper: in public he is a man of integrity and benevolence; in private he is an opium addict. And while seeming to smile on the engagement of his nephew, Edwin Drood, he is, in fact, consumed by jealousy, driven to terrify the boy’s fiancée and to plot the murder of Edwin himself. Though The Mystery of Edwin Drood is one of its author’s darkest books, it also bustles with a vast roster of memorable–and delightfully named–minor characters: Mrs. Billikins, the landlady; the foolish Mr. Sapsea; the domineering philanthropist, Mr. Honeythunder; and the mysterious Datchery. Several attempts have been made over the years to complete the novel and solve the mystery, but even in its unfinished state it is a gripping and haunting masterpiece.

The Pickwick Papers (Everyman's Library (Cloth))

Charles Dickens(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)

Charles Dickens’s satirical masterpiece, The Pickwick Papers, catapulted the young writer into literary fame when it was first serialized in 1836–37. It recounts the rollicking adventures of the members of the Pickwick Club as they travel about England getting into all sorts of mischief. Laugh-out-loud funny and endlessly entertaining, the book also reveals Dickens’s burgeoning interest in the parliamentary system, lawyers, the Poor Laws, and the ills of debtors’ prisons. As G. K. Chesterton noted, “Before [Dickens] wrote a single real story, he had a kind of vision . . . a map full of fantastic towns, thundering coaches, clamorous market-places, uproarious inns, strange and swaggering figures. That vision was Pickwick.”

The Uncommercial Traveller

Charles Dickens, Daniel TylerAt the height of his career, around the time he was working on Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens wrote a series of sketches, mostly set in London, which he collected as The Uncommercial Traveller. In the persona of "the Uncommercial," Dickens wanders the city streets and brings London, its inhabitants, commerce, and entertainment vividly to life. Sometimes autobiographical, as childhood experiences are interwoven with adult memories, the sketches include visits to the Paris Morgue, the Liverpool docks, a workhouse, a school for poor children, and the theater. They also describe the perils of travel, including seasickness, shipwreck, the coming of the railways, and the wretchedness of dining in English hotels and restaurants.

The work is quintessential Dickens, with each piece showcasing his imaginative writing style, his keen observational powers, and his characteristic wit. In this edition Daniel Tyler explores Dickens's fascination with the city and the book's connections with concerns evident in his fiction: social injustice, human mortality, a fascination with death and the passing of time. Often funny, sometimes indignant, always exuberant, The Uncommercial Traveller is a revelatory encounter with Dickens and the Victorian city he knew so well.

What Christmas Is as We Grow Older

Charles Dickens