Classics > Charles Dickens Classics

Advantages: Characters are exceptional.
Disadvantages: Quite lengthy.

Great Expectations The novel Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, follows a young, socially inexperienced boy through his journey of disillusionment and morally incorrect choices. These choices ultimately end with his inability to adapt to life and the relationships around him. Pip encounters various tragedies throughout his perplexing years, plunging him into a life of deceit, debt and mysterious truths. These are all told through the eyes ...
...cover. Towards the end of Great Expectations, Pip is content with where his life has ended up. Throughout life, Pip has changed from a loving, young boy into one who strives for better things and, as a result of this, becomes much more egotistical in his relationships in life. However, when his expectations come to an end, so does his desire for improvement and thus becomes a very good - natured person. I particularly enjoyed reading this novel ... Read review

Advantages: Gripping novel set during French Revolution
Disadvantages: Dickens gets a bit gory

A Tale of Two Cities starts with one of the most famous opening lines in English literature - 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'. Over the English Channel in Paris, the French Revolution is underway at the end of the eighteenth century. This means that the world for ordinary people is turning upside down. The decadent king, Louis XIV and his queen, Antoinette, will be excuted by guillotine as the people demand an end to absolutist ...
...time, there was a threat that these ideas may spread to England. As such, it is Dicken's only historical novel. It is also my favourite, not that I do not like David Copperfield and his others. He manages to avoid the over-sentimentality that some characters indulge in. ... Read review

Advantages: Rewarding, interesting and a real, cosy, ol' fashioned story!
Disadvantages: Quite a large time investment involved

Our Mutual Friend, By Charles Dickens Some Background The novel was originally published in 1865 and was his last completed work before his death in the summer of 1870. During the latter years of his writing career Dickens moved away from the more comic plots of his earlier years, and developed a far more complex and brooding style. Our Mutual Friend typifies this formula with its numerous, complicated and interlinked plot lines set largely along ...
...so immense and complex that it is without doubt difficult to categorise: It is a love story, a murder mystery, a psychological thriller and a smirk-ridden satire of contemporary society at every level. Main Characters To say to much at this point would be to tell to much - I don't want to ruin the twist in the tail of this one, but here is a useful breakdown of characters and a description (as they stand at the beginning of the book) The Hexams: ... Read review

Advantages: Good easy to read book
Disadvantages: Slow start

The Pickwick Papers. A little about the author. Charles Dickens was a great social reformer, most of his books were written to highlight the plight of the lower classes. He was a frequent visitor to the house of commons and campaigned vigorously against debtors prisons. Why the book was written. Charles Dickens was commissioned to write a series of stories about sporting events in England. Having little or no interest in sport he came up with ...
...saw. A taste of the book. This then was the birth of the Pickwick club. A cricket match gives us the sporting excuse for the paymaster but it is the picture of the people that Dickens paints that steal the limelight. The characters are all typically Dickensian and are described wonderfully by the author. The adventures they enjoy and the people they meet could indeed be from any other novel by the same author. The group of friends led by Mr Pickwick ... Read review

Advantages: wonderfully envisaged comic characters
Disadvantages: lack of interest in the main characters

Nicholas approaches his uncle Ralph in London to appeal for assistance for himself, his sister Kate and his mother after his father dies. Unfortunately, Ralph has made a God of money rather than family, and his reluctant 'help' consists in him finding the siblings unsuitable jobs and allowing Kate in particular to be socially abused by his business partners. The novel follows Nicholas's path to becoming a gentleman and re-establishing his sister ...
...for the most part, (all Nicholas wants is to be a gentleman,) but the minor characters are fascinating, and it is not necessarily true that one-sided means boring. Mrs Nickleby is a rich seam of humour as her monologues roll on without impediment, encompassing Shakespeare, partridges, hansom cabs and all sorts without the slightest reference to what her audience might or might not be interested in. Her idea of being courted by 'the gentleman in the ... Read review