Unusually for Dickens, Hard Times is set, not in London, but in the imaginary mid-Victorian Northern industrial town of Coketown with its blackened factories, downtrodden workers & polluted environment. This is the soulless domain of the strict utilitarian Thomas Gradgrind & the heartless factory owner Josiah Bounderby. However, human joy is not excluded thanks to ' Mr Sleary's Horse-Riding' circus, a gin-soaked & hilarious troupe of open-hearted & affectionate people who act as an antidote to all the drudgery & misery endured by the ordinary citizens of Coketown. Macaulay attacked Hard Times for its 'sullen socialism', but 20th century critic such as George Bernard Shaw & F.R. Leavis have praised this book in the highest terms, while readers the world over have found inspiration & enjoyment from what is both Dickens' shortest completed novel & also one of his important statements on Victorian society. ...

Little Dorritt is a classic tale of imprisonment, both literal & metaphorical, while Dickens' working title for the novel, Nobody's Fault, highlights its concern with personal responsibility in private & public life. Dickens' childhood experiences inform the vivid scenes in Marshalsea debtor's prison, while his adult perceptions of governmental failures shape his satirical picture of the Circumlocution Office. The novel's range of characters
- the honest, the crooked, the selfish & the self-denying
- offers a portrait of a society about whose values Dickens had profound doubts. Little Dorrit is indisputably one of Dickens' finest works, written at the height of his powers. George Bernard Shaw called it 'a masterpiece among masterpieces', a verdict shared by the novel's many admirers.

...

Martin Chuzzlewit is Charles Dickens' comic masterpiece about which his biographer, Forster, noted that it marked a crucial phase in the author's development as he began to delve deeper into the 'springs of character'. Old Martin Chuzzlewit, tormented by the greed & selfishness of his family, effectively drives his grandson, young Martin, but also for his grandfather & his grandfather's servant, Mary Graham, with whom young Martin is in love. The commercial swindle of the Anglo-Bengalee Company & the fraudulent Eden Land Corporation have a topicality in our own time. This strong sub-plot shows evidence of Dickens's mastery of crime where characters such as the criminal Jonas Chuzzlewit, the old nurse Mrs Gamp, & the arch-hypocrite Seth Pecksniff are the equal to any in his other great novels. Generations of readers have also delighted in Dickens' wonderful description of the London boarding
- house
- ' Todgers'.

...

Following the success of Pickwick Papers & Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby was hailed as a comic triumph & firmly established Dickens as a 'literary gentleman'. It has a full supporting cast of delectable characters that range from the iniquitous Wackford Squeers & his family, to he delightful Mrs Nickleby, taking in the eccentric Crummles & his travelling players, the Mantalinis, the Kenwigs & many more. Combining these with typically Dickensian elements of burlesque & farce, the novel is eminently suited to dramatic adaptation. So great was its impact as it left Dickens' pen that many pirated versions appeared in print & on stage before the original was even finished. ...

Dickens had already achieved renown with the Pickwick Papers. With Oliver Twist his reputation was enhanced & strengthened. The novel contains many classic Dickensian themes
- grinding poverty, desperation, fear, temptation & the eventual triumph of good into he face of great adversity. Oliver Twist features some of the author's most enduring characters, such as Oliver himself (who dares to ask for more), the tyrannical Bumble, the diabolical Fagin, the menacing Bill Sykes, Nancy & 'the Artful Dodger'. For any reader wishing to delve into he works of the great Victorian literary colossus, Oliver Twist is, without, an essential title.
...

The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), with its combination of the sentimental, the grotesque & the socially concerned, & its story of pursuit & courage, which sets the downtrodden & the plucky against the malevolent & the villainous, was an immediate popular success. Little Nell quickly became one of Dickens' most celebrated characters, who so captured the imagination of his readers that while the novel was being serialised, many of them wrote to home about her fate. Dickens was conscious of the 'many friends' the novel had won for him, & 'the many hearts it turned to me when they were full of private sorrow', & it remains one of the most familiar & well-loved of his works. ...

Dickens's final novel, left unfinished at his death, is a tale of mystery who fast-paced action takes place in an ancient cathedral city & in some of the darkest places in nineteenth-century London. Drugs, sexual obsession, colonial adventuring & puzzles about identity are among the novel's themes. At the centre of the plot lie the baffling disappearance of Edwin Drood & the many explanations of his whereabouts. A sombre & menacing atmosphere, a fascinating, range of characters & Dickens's usual superb command of language combine to make this an exciting & tantalising story. Also included in this volume are a number of unjustly neglected stories & sketches, with subjects as different as murder & guilt & childhood romance. This unusual selection illustrates Dickens's immense creativity & versatility. ...

The Pickwick Papers is Dickens' first novel & widely regarded as one of the major classics of comic writing in English. Originally serialised in monthly instalments, it quickly became a huge popular success with sales reaching 40, 000 by the final number. In the century & a half since its first appearance, the characters of Mr Pickwick, Sam Weller & the whole Pickwickian crew have entered the consciousness of all who love English literature in general, & the works of Dickens in particular. ...

Showcases photographs from National Geographic's photographic archive as well as other collections. This volume presents a varied group portrait of people at work
- in great cities & tiny villages; in 19th-century China & 21st-century New York; in fields, factories, food carts, & four-star restaurants.
...