Charles Dickens

'Please, Mr Murdstone! Don't beat me! I've tried to learn my lessons, really I have, sir!' sobs David. Although he is only eight years old, Mr Murdstone does beat him, and David is so frightened that he bites his cruel stepfather's hand. For that, he is kept locked in his room for five days and nights, and nobody is allowed to speak to him. As David grows up, he learns that life is full of trouble and misery and cruelty. But he also finds laughter and kindness, trust and friendship... and love.

In a gloomy, neglected house Miss Havisham sits, as she has sat year after year, in a wedding dress and veil that were once white, and are now faded and yellow with age. Her face is like a death's head; her dark eyes burn with bitterness and hate. By her side sits a proud and beautiful girl, and in front of her, trembling with fear in his thick country boots, stands young Pip. Miss Havisham stares at Pip coldly, and murmurs to the girl at her side: 'Break his heart, Estella. Break his heart!'

His mother is dead, so little Oliver Twist is brought up in the workhouse. Beaten and starved, he runs away to London, where he joins Fagin’s gang of thieves. By chance he also finds good new friends – but can they protect him from people who rob and murder without mercy?

This great story is set against the background of the French Revolution. Two men – one French, one English, but very similar in appearance – are in love with the same woman. The three of them, like the people of France, are faced with the dangers of life at a time when the guillotine never rests.

Pip is a poor orphan whose life is changed forever by two very different meetings – one with an escaped convict and the other with an eccentric old lady and the beautiful girl who lives with her. And who is the mysterious person who leaves him a fortune?

His mother is dead, so little Oliver Twist is brought up in the workhouse. Beaten and starved, he runs away to London, where he joins Fagin’s gang of thieves. By chance he also finds good new friends – but can they protect him from people who rob and murder without mercy?

A retelling of Dickens' famous novel about the trials and tribulations of the poor young orphan boy, Oliver.Follow his journey from the appalling conditions of a nineteenth-century workhouse to London.

A romantic thriller set against the background of the French Revolution.

'What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done to him?' Ebenezer Scrooge is a bad-tempered skinflint who hates Christmas and all it stands for, but a ghostly visitor foretells three apparitions who will thaw Scrooge's frozen heart. «A Christmas Carol» has gripped the public imagination since it was first published in 1843, and it is now as much a part of Christmas as mistletoe or plum pudding. This edition reprints the story alongside Dickens's four other Christmas Books: «The Chimes», «The Cricket on the Hearth», «The Battle of Life», and «The Haunted Man». All five stories show Dickens at his unpredictable best, jumbling together comedy and melodrama, genial romance and urgent social satire, in pursuit of his aim 'to awaken some loving and forbearing thoughts, never out of season in a Christian land'.

David Copperfield's happy life suddenly changes when his mother marries again. Her new husband is cruel to him and sends him away to school. When David's mother dies, he is sent to work in London. He hates his job so he runs away. He has no money for food or for travelling. But it is the beginning of his life of adventure.

One bleak and windy evening, 8-year-old Pip meets an escaped convict on the marshes. Shortly afterwards, he is summoned to Satis House, the derelict, gloomy home of the strange, reclusive Miss Havisham. Here, Pip meets and falls in love with the beautiful, cold-hearted Estella but can they ever be together?

Each volume in the Collector's Library series has a specially commissioned Afterword, brief biography of the author and a further reading list. The Afterword is by leading UK playwright, novelist and eminent Sherlockian, David Stuart Davies.

'I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is DAVID COPPERFIELD,' wrote Dickens of what is the most personal, certainly one of the most popular, of all his novels. Dickens wrote the book after the completion of a fragment of autobiography recalling his employment as a child in a London warehouse, and in the first-person narrative, a new departure for him, realized marvellously the workings of memory. The embodiment of his boyhood experience in the novel involved a 'complicated interweaving of truth and fiction', at its most subtle in the portrait of his father as Mr Micawber, one of Dickens's greatest comic creations. Enjoying a humour that never becomes caricature, the reader shares David's affection for the eccentric Betsey Trotwood and her protege Mr Dick, and smiles with the narrator at the trials he endures in his love for the delightfully silly Dora. Settings, (East Anglia, the London of the 1820s), people, and events are unified by their relationship to the story of Steerforth's treachery, which reaches its powerful climax in the storm scene.This edition, which has the accurate Clarendon text, includes Dickens's trial titles and working notes, and eight of the original illustrations by 'Phiz'.

The spectre of the French Revolution — the rumbling of the death carts, the thud of the guillotine, the ferocious mobs and the storming of the Bastille — is vividly portrayed Charles Dickens' epic tale.

»Vintage Youth» is a limited edition gift pack which consists of beautifully designed separate volumes of «Oliver Twist» by Charles Dickens and Irvine Welsh's controversial bestseller «Trainspotting.» «Vintage Youth» is just one of ten «Vintage Classic Twins» to collect. Each twin consists of two books: a specially designed limited edition of one modern classic title and one established classic work. The books in each pair have been carefully selected to provide a thought-provoking combination. «Oliver Twist»: Oliver is an orphan living on the dangerous London streets with no one but himself to rely on. Fleeing from poverty and hardship, he falls in with a criminal street gang who will not let him go. Dickens graphically conjures up the capital's underworld, full of prostitutes, thieves and lost and homeless children, and gives a voice to the disadvantaged and abused. «Trainspotting»: Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food into your mouth; choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life.

The Oxford Bookworms Library provides superb reading and student / teacher support for the classroom, and is also highly recommended for schools running Extensive Reading Programmes, offering the right range of books that encourage students to read for pleasure. 'The Marquis lay there, like stone, with a knife pushed into his heart. On his chest lay a piece of paper, with the words: Drive him fast to the grave. This is from JACQUES'. The French Revolution brings terror and death to many people. But even in these troubled times people can still love and be kind. They can be generous and true-hearted... and brave.

Nicholas Nickleby is a kind man who works at a cruel school full of poor, hungry children. Can he ever find happiness in a world where stupid, greedy people have all the power and brave, honest people have nothing? Now a major film.

- A retelling of the classic Charles Dickens story for children growing in their reading confidence and ability. — Part of the Usborne Reading Programme developed with reading experts from Roehampton University.

Oliver, an orphan in 19th-century London, falls into a den of thieves, but is finally rescued by Mr. Brownlow, a wealthy benefactor. In each of Barron's «Graphic Classics» an English literary classic is transformed into a dramatic graphic novel with superb, atmospheric color illustrations and a finely-paced narrative. The tale — chosen from among important novels in the literary canon — will keep young readers fascinated from first page to last. «Graphic Classics» make fine introductions for young readers to the riches of English literature. Books are available in both paperback and hardcover editions. In addition to the stories, each title features a brief biography and time line of its author, a list of his important works, a glossary, and an index. As such, these books are suitable for classroom use on junior and senior high school levels.

Dickens' classic rags-to-riches tale of Pip, an orphan who inherits a mysterious fortune and all of the troubles that go with it. The dynamic teen-oriented cover makes this the book to have in stock.

This collection brings together perhaps the finest of Dickens' shorter novels, filled with event, character, and the unsurpassed brilliance of his story-telling. «Oliver Twist» enhanced and strengthened Dickens' reputation and contains classic Dickensian themes — grinding poverty, desperation, fear, temptation and the eventual triumph of good in the face of great adversity. «Hard Times» was attacked by Macaulay for its 'sullen socialism', but 20th-century critics — George Bernard Shaw and F. R. Leavis praised it in the highest terms. «A Tale of Two Cities», Dickens' greatest historical novel, traces the lives of a group of people caught up in the cataclysm of the French Revolution and the Terror. A fascinating range of characters and Dickens' usual superb command of language combine to make this an exciting and tantalising story.»Great Expectations» traces the life of Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man of character. From its dramatic opening on the bleak Kentish marshes, the story abounds with memorable characters — the blacksmith Joe Gargery, the mysterious convict Abel Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Havisham and the beautiful Estella.

This simple retelling of the classic Dickens Christmas story has been adapted for children starting to read independently and remains faithful to the original text. With illustrations by Alan Marks, children will shudder at Marley's ghost and sympathize with Tiny Tim's plight.

Pip Pirrip is a poor orphan boy destined to become a blacksmith. But a chance meeting with an escaped convict and an invitation to the house of the eccentric Miss Havisham mark the beginning of great changes in his life. After receiving a large amount of money from a secret benefactor Pip goes to London to be educated as a ‘gentleman’. But who is his secret benefactor?

Dickens had already achieved renown with The Pickwick Papers. With Oliver Twist his reputation was enhanced and strengthened. The novel contains many classic Dickensian themes — grinding poverty, desperation, fear, temptation and the eventual triumph of good in the 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 and 'the Artful Dodger'.