The Charles Dickens Selected Treasury (Includes Four Classics of British Literature, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities)

No other novelist has created a world as rich and varied as Charles Dickens (1812-1870) or has brought so much pleasure to so many readers.

Oliver Twist tells of a foundling in Victorian England, his abuse in an orphanage, his adventures with the thieves of London, and his eventual rescue. The novel brings to life such unforgettable characters as thievish Fagan, brutal Bill Sikes, the Artful Dodger, and the benevolent Mr. Brownlow, vividly portraying a rich and dynamic era marked by great extremes in wealth and poverty.

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” So begins A Tale of Two Cities: Paris and London in the 1790s, when France was convulsed by a revolution and the notorious Reign of Terror. The novel follows the fortunes of the arrogant Marquis St. Evrémonde; Dr. Manette, long imprisoned in the fortress of the Bastille; his daughter, Lucie: his son-in-law, Charles Darnay; and Sidney Carton, a cynical and dissolute London lawyer who makes the ultimate sacrifice for his friends.

Since its publication in 1843, A Christmas Carol has been a beloved narrative for every Christmas season. It tells of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, who underpays his clerk, Bob Cratchit, leaving Bob’s family in poverty and unable to give his invalid son Tiny Tim the care he needs. We follow Scrooge through encounters with Christmas Past, Present, and Future to his final redemption. The English author G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The beauty and blessing of the story . . . lie in the great furnace of real happiness that glows through Scrooge and everything around him.”

Great Expectations remains one of Dickens’ most accomplished novels. It tells of the boy Pip, who helps Abel Magwitch, a runaway convict, and follows Pip to his acquisition of a mysterious fortune, which makes of him a young gentleman in London. In the meantime, he meets old Miss Havisham, jilted long ago and still pining in her decaying mansion, and the beautiful but condescending Estelle. Great Expectations tells an unforgettable story of a young man’s coming of age.

These novels are not only classics of English literature, they are also unparalleled in bringing enjoyment to generations of readers.

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