Search results for ""author charles dickens"

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol tells the time-honored tale of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, whose encounters with the ghosts of Jacob Marley, Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come lead him to examine his bitter existence. Haunting steampunk illustrations by acclaimed artist Zdenko Basic accompany the original story, transforming this Christmas classic like never before. Images of steam-powered machinery, a chilling industrial London, and ornate mechanical gears come together as Scrooge travels through his life on Christmas Eve night. Additionally, Charles Dickens' celebrated short stores, The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton" and A Christmas Tree" are included and paired with equally enchanting steampunk illustrations. Those of us who cherish each holiday with Dickens in our hearts,the man who has linked the Christmas spirit with love, forgiveness, and charity,will treasure this rare collector's edition for this Christmas and many to come.

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Sixteen scholars from across the globe come together in Charles Dickens as an Agent of Change to show how Dickens was (and still is) the consummate change agent. His works, bursting with restless energy in the Inimitable's protean style, registered and commented on the ongoing changes in the Victorian world while the Victorians' fictional and factional worlds kept (and keep) changing. The essays from notable Dickens scholars—Malcolm Andrews, Matthias Bauer, Joel J. Brattin, Doris Feldmann, Herbert Foltinek, Robert Heaman, Michael Hollington, Bert Hornback, Norbert Lennartz, Chris Louttit, Jerome Meckier, Nancy Aycock Metz, David Paroissien, Christopher Pittard, and Robert Tracy—suggest the many ways in which the notion of change has found entry into and is negotiated in Dickens' works through four aspects: social change, political and ideological change, literary change, and cultural change. An afterword by the late Edgar Rosenberg adds a personal account of how Dickens changed the life of one eminent Dickensian.

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"Deeply respecting, and bowing down before the character of Our Saviour, you cannot go very wrong, and will always preserve at heart a true spirit of veneration and humility." Charles Dickens Charles Dickens was a great storyteller; he possessed the unique ability of documenting the realities of life for both his contemporaries and future generations. A journalist, commentator, historian, and the social conscience of a nation, his influence and reach extended far beyond that normally associated with a novelist. Although the subject of numerous books, none have sought to detail how the writer tried through his work to change the hearts of his readers. In this authoritative and highly readable new biography, Keith Hooper explores the nature and development of Dickens's faith, and the means by which it was expressed. This excellent study of Dickens's beliefs and struggles with the contemporary church gives new and valuable insight into his literary work.

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How successful is Dickens in his portrayal of women? Dickens has been represented (along with William Blake and D.H. Lawrence) as one who championed the life of the emotions often associated with the "feminine." Yet some of his most important heroines are totally submissive and docile. Dickens, of course, had to accept the conventions of his time. It is obvious, argues Holbrook, that Dickens idealized the father-daughter relationship, and indeed, any such relationship that was unsexual, like that of Tom Pinch and his sister—but why? Why, for example, is the image of woman so often associated with death, as in Great Expectations? Dickens's own struggles over relationships with women have been documented, but much less has been said about the unconscious elements behind these problems. Using recent developements in psychoanalytic object-relations theory, David Holbrook offers new insight into the way in which the novels of Dickens—particularly Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Great Expectations—both uphold emotional needs and at the same time represent the limits of his view of women and that of his time.

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What are the sources of the commonly held presumption that reading literature should make people more just, humane, and sophisticated? Rendering literary history responsive to the cultural histories of reading, publishing, and education, The Pleasures of Memory illuminates the ways in which Dickens’s serial fiction shaped not only the popular practice of reading for pleasure and instruction but also the school subject we now know as “English.” Winter shows how Dickens’s serial fiction instigated specific reading practices by reworking the conventions of religious didactic tracts from which most Victorians learned to read. Incorporating an influential associationist psychology of learning founded on the cumulative functioning of memory, Dickens’s serial novels consistently led readers to reflect on their reading as a form of shared experience. Dickens’s celebrity authorship, Winter argues, represented both a successful marketing program for popular fiction and a cultural politics addressed to a politically unaffiliated, social-activist Victorian readership. As late-nineteenth century educational reforms consolidated British and American readers into “mass” populations served by state school systems, Dickens’s beloved novels came to embody the socially inclusive and humanizing goals of democratic education.

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What are the sources of the commonly held presumption that reading literature should make people more just, humane, and sophisticated? Rendering literary history responsive to the cultural histories of reading, publishing, and education, The Pleasures of Memory illuminates the ways in which Dickens’s serial fiction shaped not only the popular practice of reading for pleasure and instruction but also the school subject we now know as “English.” Winter shows how Dickens’s serial fiction instigated specific reading practices by reworking the conventions of religious didactic tracts from which most Victorians learned to read. Incorporating an influential associationist psychology of learning founded on the cumulative functioning of memory, Dickens’s serial novels consistently led readers to reflect on their reading as a form of shared experience. Dickens’s celebrity authorship, Winter argues, represented both a successful marketing program for popular fiction and a cultural politics addressed to a politically unaffiliated, social-activist Victorian readership. As late-nineteenth century educational reforms consolidated British and American readers into “mass” populations served by state school systems, Dickens’s beloved novels came to embody the socially inclusive and humanizing goals of democratic education.

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A charming memento of the Victorian era's literary colossus, The Daily Charles Dickens is a literary almanac for the ages. Tenderly and irreverently anthologized by Dickens scholar James R. Kincaid, this collection mines the British author's beloved novels and Christmas stories as well as his lesser-known sketches and letters for "an around-the-calendar set of jolts, soothings, blandishments, and soarings." A bedside companion to dip into year round, this book introduces each month with a longer seasonal quote, while concise bits of wisdom and whimsy mark each day. Hopping gleefully from Esther Summerson's abandonment by her mother in Bleak House to a meditation on the difficult posture of letter-writing in The Pickwick Papers, this anthology displays the wide range of Dickens's stylistic virtuosity-his humor and his deep tragic sense, his ear for repetition, and his genius at all sorts of voices. Even the devotee will find between these pages a mix of old friends and strangers-from Oliver Twist and Ebenezer Scrooge to the likes of Lord Coodle, Sir Thomas Doodle, Mrs. Todgers, and Edwin Drood-as well as a delightful assortment of the some of the novelist's most famous, peculiar, witty, and incisive passages, tailored to fit the season. To give one particularly apt example: David Copperfield blunders, in a letter of apology to Agnes Wickfield, "I began one note, in a six-syllable line, `Oh, do not remember'-but that associated itself with the fifth of November, and became an absurdity." Never Pecksniffian or Gradgrindish, this daily dose of Dickens crystallizes the novelist's agile humor and his reformist zeal alike. This is a book to accompany you through the best of times and the worst of times.

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2012 is the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of our greatest and most important novelists, Charles Dickens. To celebrate we''re publishing six of his works in this exclusive and sumptuous boxed set of lavish, clothbound editions, designed by Penguin''s own award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.Part of Penguin''s beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design.

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This is a collection of five of Dickens' best-known novels: "Oliver Twist", "A Christmas Carol", "David Copperfield", "Great Expectations" and "A Tale of Two Cities". This volume of fiction that truly captures the Victorian era will make an artful addition to any home library. Many readers know Victorian England through the writings of Charles Dickens. Not only did Dickens put a face to the era through his memorable characters, he also captured the spirit of his age in entertaining fiction spun from its social concerns and historical events. Prolific, energetic and committed to social change, no other novelist of the time did as much as Charles Dickens to rally his readers to action and no other writer at any time has created such an extraordinary collection of well-loved novels. This exquisitely designed leatherbound edition has distinctive gilt edging and an attractive silk-ribbon bookmark.

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Celebrate the bicentennial birthday of Charles Dickens with this Miniature Edition packed with witty summaries of the novels of one of history's most beloved storytellers. All fans of great literature can enjoy these perfectly portable renditions of Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and all the Dickensian classics. Featuring synopses, character profiles, and illustrations, this mini book brings to life twenty classic tales and the iconic characters that populate the world of Dickens.

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Build your child’s reading confidence at home with books at the right level Charles Dickens was a famous writer who lived in the 19th century. Discover what life was like for Charles, from spending his childhood working in a factory to finding a job as a law clerk and starting his writing career in this biography by Jim Eldridge. Lime/Band 11 books have longer sentence structures and a greater use of literary language Text type: A biography Pages 30 and 31 present a timeline of Charles Dickens’ life, allowing children to recap the events from the book. Curriculum links: Literacy: Information texts. This book has been quizzed for Accelerated Reader.

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In the first book centering on the collaborative relationship between Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Lillian Nayder places their coauthored works in the context of the Victorian publishing industry and shows how their fiction and drama represent and reconfigure their sometimes strained relationship. She challenges the widely accepted image of Dickens as a mentor of younger writers such as Collins, points to the ways in which Dickens controlled and profited from his literary "satellites," and charts Collins's development as an increasingly significant and independent author. The pair's collaborations for Household Words and All the Year Round explicitly addressed Victorian labor disputes and political unrest, and Nayder reads the stories in terms of the social and imperial conflicts that both provided their themes and enabled Dickens and Collins to mediate their own personal and professional differences. Nayder's discussion of the collaboration and its principals is greatly enriched by archival research into unpublished and unfamiliar material, including the manuscripts of The Frozen Deep.

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The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin is the acclaimed story of Nelly Ternan and Charles DickensWinner of the NCR Book Award, the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize'This is the story of someone who - almost - wasn't there; who vanished into thin air. Her names, dates, family and experiences very nearly disappeared from the record for good ...'Claire Tomalin's multi-award-winning story of the life of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens is a remarkable work of biography and historical revisionism that returns the neglected actress to her rightful place in history as well as providing a compelling and truthful portrait of the great Victorian novelist. For those who enjoyed Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self and Charles Dickens: A Life; The Invisible Woman is invaluable reading for lovers of Charles Dickens, and for readers of biography everywhere.'Will come to be seen as one of the crucial women's biographies because of its vivid dramatization of the process by which women have been written out of history and have been forced to deny their own experiences' Sean French, New Statesman'The most original biography I read this year. Starting out with scarcely the bare bones of a story, Tomalin convinces by the end that she has got as near to the truth as anyone will' Anthony Howard, Sunday Times'A biography of high scholarship and compelling detective work' Melvyn Bragg, IndependentClaire Tomalin is the award-winning author of eight highly acclaimed biographies, including: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft; Shelley and His World; Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life; The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens; Mrs Jordan's Profession; Jane Austen: A Life; Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self; Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man and, most recently, Charles Dickens: A Life. A former literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times, she is married to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.

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Charles Dickens was born into fairly comfortable circumstances in Portsmouth in 1812, but his father incurred considerable debt and was eventually imprisoned. At the age of 12, Dickens had to work in a shoe blacking factory and was only able to continue his education at 15. In 1833, he began a career in journalism and his first novel, The Pickwick Papers (1836-37), established him as an author. By the time of his death in 1870, he was the world's most popular writer.

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Inventing Scrooge uncovers the real-life inspirations from Charles Dickens' own world that led to the fascinating creation of his most beloved tale: A Christmas Carol.When Charles Dickens created the story that would become A Christmas Carol, little did he know that his ghostly little book would reinvent the way we celebrate Christmas. From a graveyard in Edinburgh to the Marshalsea Prison in London to his schoolboy years in Chatham and even his lifelong fascination with dance, so much of Dickens' past and present are woven into the characters and themes of A Christmas Carol. And by understanding the story behind the story, readers will come to embrace the holiday classic all the more. To this day, we look to the Christmas season as a time of warmth and celebration among family, friends, and strangers alike. And every year at Christmastime, not only do our lives get better for all the festivity, but we get better, as people. Just like Ebenezer Scrooge.

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Charles Dickens called his sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth his ‘best and truest friend’. Georgina saw Dickens as much more than a friend. They lived together for twenty-eight years, during which time their relationship constantly changed. The sister of his wife Catherine, the sharp and witty Georgina moved into the Dickens home aged fifteen. What began as a father–daughter relationship blossomed into a genuine rapport, but their easy relations were fractured when Dickens had a mid-life crisis and determined to rid himself of Catherine. Georgina’s refusal to leave Dickens and his desire for her to remain in his household led to rumours of an affair and even illegitimate children. He left her the equivalent of almost £1 million and all his personal papers in his will. Georgina’s commitment to Dickens was unwavering but it is far from clear what he did to deserve such loyalty. There were several occasions when he misused her in order to protect his public reputation.Why did Georgina betray her once much-loved sister? Why did she fall out with her family and risk her reputation in order to stay with Dickens? And why did the Dickenses’ daughter Katey say it was ‘the greatest mistake ever’ to invite a sister-in-law to live with a family?

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'The greatest writer of his time.' (George Orwell)The author of 20 much-loved novels and novellas, Charles Dickens combined humour and pathos to explore Victorian society in all its shades. Widely praised for his rich narratives and larger-than-life characters, he was not only a celebrity author but also an admired social reformer. Moving from the refined drawing rooms of the upper classes to the horrors of the workhouse or the filthy back streets of London, Dickens' writings shone a light on the harsh inequalities of the times.The Little Book of Charles Dickens showcases wonderful quotes from the author's writings, alongside fascinating facts about his life and achievements. By turns witty, comic, insightful and wise, this delightful volume is a fitting tribute to a literary giant.SAMPLE QUOTE: 'It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up.' Bleak HouseSAMPLE FACT: When Dickens was 12 years old, his father was sent to a debtor's prison. Forced to become the family's main breadwinner, the young Dickens worked at Warren's Blacking Factory, where he was paid a pittance for pasting labels onto bottles of shoe polish.

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‘Dickens’s Favourite Blacking Factory’ is the extraordinary story of Charles Day, a self-made nineteenth-century boot-blacking entrepreneur, the dispute over whose Will led Charles Dickens to create the apparently endless case of ‘Jarndyce and Jarndyce’ in his novel ‘Bleak House’. In this remarkable and highly imaginative telling of a true story, after a decades-long search for information on his ancestor, the author makes a fluke discovery, revealing a sweeping story of Regency and early-Victorian London. An actual 170,000-word document uncovered in the National Archives exposes the tragic last two months of the life of Charles Day. This includes his deteriorating mental faculties resulting from tertiary syphilis, his remarkable philanthropy, blackmail by a dodgy solicitor, the inertia of the contemporary legal system and the shame of illegitimacy, particularly in the wealthy classes. Perhaps the plot of Dickens’s ‘Bleak House’ even reflects aspects of Charles Day’s own life?

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From childhood, Charles Dickens was fascinated by tales from other countries and other cultures and he longed to see the world. In Dickens and Travel, Lucinda Hawksley looks at the journeys made by her great great great grandfather. Dickens is usually perceived as a London author, yet in the 1840s, he whisked his family away to live in Italy for year, and some years later took up residence in Switzerland and then Paris. He travelled widely in Europe, long before the arrival of high-speed rail, toured America (twice) and Canada and, before his untimely death, was planning a tour of Australia. Dickens and Travel enters into the world of the Victorian traveller and looks at how Dickens's journeys affected his writing.

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By the Booker-winning author of Schindler's Ark, a vibrant novel about Charles Dickens' son and his little-known adventures in the Australian Outback.In 1868, Charles Dickens dispatches his youngest child, sixteen-year-old Edward, to Australia. Posted to a remote sheep station in New South Wales, Edward discovers that his father's fame has reached even there, as has the gossip about his father's scandalous liaison with an actress. Amid colonists, ex-convicts, local tribespeople and a handful of eligible young women, Edward strives to be his own man - and keep secret the fact that he's read none of his father's novels.Conjuring up a life of sheep-droving, horse-racing and cricket tournaments in a community riven with tensions and prejudice, the story of Edward's adventures also affords an intimate portrait of Dickens' himself. This vivacious novel is classic Keneally: historical figures and events re-imagined with verve, humour and compassion.

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From a bitter childhood mired in poverty and hard work to a career as the most acclaimed and best-loved writer in the English-speaking world, Charles Dickens had a life as tumultuous as any he created in his teeming novels of life in Victorian England. And no one has captured the rich texture of this life as colorfully and persuasively as Fred Kaplan in this acclaimed biography. Drawing on unpublished and long-forgotten sources, Kaplan presents a full-scale portrait of Dickens and his world. From the autobiographical basis of his novels and his extraordinary circle of friends to the course of his unhappy marriage and complicated family relations, Kaplan reveals the restless compulsions, private passions, and professional concerns that drove Dickens to unprecedented literary success. Kaplan details Dickens's often stormy dealings with his publishers and his carefully cultivated relationship with readers, heightened through amateur theatricals and numerous public readings in Britain and North America. Brilliantly written and thoroughly researched, Dickens provides an absorbing and perceptive account of its subject as a singularly complex man and a consummate artist, offering readers new insights into Dickens's-and literature's-greatest works, works such as Bleak House, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and Oliver Twist.

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Even within the context of Charles Dickens's history as a publishing innovator, Our Mutual Friend is notable for what it reveals about Dickens as an author and about Victorian publishing. Marking Dickens's return to the monthly number format after nearly a decade of writing fiction designed for weekly publication in All the Year Round, Our Mutual Friend emerged against the backdrop of his failing health, troubled relationship with Ellen Ternan, and declining reputation among contemporary critics. In his subtly argued publishing history, Sean Grass shows how these difficulties combined to make Our Mutual Friend an extraordinarily odd novel, no less in its contents and unusually heavy revisions than in its marketing by Chapman and Hall, its transformation from a serial into British and U.S. book editions, its contemporary reception by readers and reviewers, and its delightfully uneven reputation among critics in the 150 years since Dickens’s death. Enhanced by four appendices that offer contemporary accounts of the Staplehurst railway accident, information on archival materials, transcripts of all of the contemporary reviews, and a select bibliography of editions, Grass’s book shows why this last of Dickens’s finished novels continues to intrigue its readers and critics.

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Dickens and Christmas is an exploration of the 19th-century phenomenon that became the Christmas we know and love today -and of the writer who changed, forever, the ways in which it is celebrated. Charles Dickens was born in an age of great social change. He survived childhood poverty to become the most adored and influential man of his time. Throughout his life, he campaigned tirelessly for better social conditions, including by his most famous work, A Christmas Carol. He wrote this novella specifically to strike a sledgehammer blow on behalf of the poor man's child , and it began the Victorians' obsession with Christmas. This new book, written by one of his direct descendants, explores not only Dickens's most famous work, but also his all-too-often overlooked other Christmas novellas. It takes the readers through the seasonal short stories he wrote, for both adults and children, includes much-loved festive excerpts from his novels, uses contemporary newspaper clippings, and looks at Christmas writings by Dickens' contemporaries. To give an even more personal insight, readers can discover how the Dickens family itself celebrated Christmas, through the eyes of Dickens's unfinished autobiography, family letters, and his children's memoirs. In Victorian Britain, the celebration of Christmas lasted for 12 days, ending on 6 January, or Twelfth Night. Through Dickens and Christmas, readers will come to know what it would have been like to celebrate Christmas in 1812, the year in which Dickens was born. They will journey through the Christmases Dickens enjoyed as a child and a young adult, through to the ways in which he and his family celebrated the festive season at the height of his fame. It also explores the ways in which his works have gone on to influence how the festive season is celebrated around the globe.

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The endearing true story of how a love of birds connected and inspired two literary giants--Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe.Years before Edgar Allan Poe's raven said "Nevermore," Charles Dickens' pet raven, Grip, was busy terrorizing the Dickens children and eating chipped paint. So how exactly did this one mischievous bird make a lasting mark on literature? From England to the United States and back again, this is the true and fascinating story of how a brilliant bird captured two famous authors' hearts, inspired their writing, and formed an unexpected bond between them. This ingenious slice of history, biography, and even ornithology celebrates the fact that creative inspiration can be found everywhere.

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A beautifully illustrated collection of five classic Charles Dickens' stories, retold for younger readers. Includes 'Oliver Twist', 'Bleak House', 'Great Expectations', 'A Tale of Two Cities' and 'David Copperfield' as well as a short biography of the great author himself. With internet links to find out more about the life and times of Charles Dickens.

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Thrilling full-cast radio dramatisations of three of Charles Dickens' classic novels. Charles Dickens is one of the most renowned novelists of all time, and this second volume of the dramatised canon of his work includes the gripping historical novel Barnaby Rudge, picaresque comedy Martin Chuzzlewit and bittersweet tale of family relationships Dombey and Son. Barnaby Rudge Against the background of the anti-Catholic riots of the 1780s, young Barnaby Rudge becomes entangled with the fanatical George Gordon and his campaign for 'No Popery'. But mob violence, the burning of Newgate Prison and the shadow of murder put his life in danger... Martin Chuzzlewit Disinherited by his wealthy grandfather because of his love for the beautiful Mary, Martin Chuzzlewit sets sail for America to seek his fortune. Dombey and Son Wealthy Paul Dombey is desperate for a male heir to continue the family business, and neglects his six-year-old daughter Florence. Then, at last, the longed-for son is born – but Dombey's hopes for him go unfulfilled... With a star cast including Simon Cadell, Bill Nighy, Alex Jennings, Robert Glenister, Geraldine James and Pam Ferris, these BBC radio adaptations bring out all the suspense, adventure, satire and social realism of Dickens' three classic masterpieces. Duration: 19 hours approx.

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We read the book, and the book is reading us. In his later novels, Charles Dickens uses the interaction between characters and their audiences within the fiction to dramatise his growing understanding of the pivotal role of spectatorship and choice in a more democratic society. Egotists of all stripes, intent on bending the world to their singular will, would appropriate the power of spectatorship by taking command of the detachment necessary for choice. Dickens’s pluralistic art of sameness and difference redefines that detachment, and liberates choice both inside and outside the novels, for the relationship between characters and their audiences within the narratives actually inscribes our own relationship with them in the performance of reading, a reflective doubling of the fiction upon the reader across time with moral consequences for our spectatorship of our own lives.

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By the author of Schindler's Ark and master storyteller, Thomas Keneally, a vibrant novel about Charles Dickens' son and his adventures in the Australian Outback.In 1868, Charles Dickens dispatches his youngest child to Australia. Like his brother Alfred before him, sixteen-year-old Edward is expected to learn to apply himself in what his father considers to be the new land of opportunity. Posted to a remote sheep station in New South Wales, Edward discovers that Charles Dickens' fame has reached even there, as has the gossip about his father's scandalous liaison with an actress. Amid colonists, ex-convicts, local tribespeople and a handful of eligible young women, Edward strives to be his own man - and keep secret the fact that he's read none of his father's novels.Conjuring up a life of sheep-droving, horse-racing and cricket tournaments in a community riven with tensions and prejudice, the story of Edward's adventures also affords an intimate portrait of Dickens' himself. This vivacious novel is classic Keneally: historical figures and events re-imagined with verve, humour and compassion.

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Charles Dickens’ timeless story is brought to life in this vibrant new version by the award-winning playwright Neil Duffield. Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year! Well, it is for everyone except the miserable Scrooge. He prefers to spend Christmas all alone in his large house, instead of celebrating with mistletoe and merriment. Bah, humbug! But one cold, dark Christmas Eve Scrooge is surprised by the ghost of Marley, his former business partner. Marley warns Scrooge that he will be called upon by three spirits - each will take him on a mysterious and magical journey to show him the error of his ways... Can Scrooge discover the true wonder and meaning of Christmas before it’s too late?

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