Charles Dickens
Author
Publication Date
1907
Lexile Measure
1070L
Summary
David Copperfield enjoys an idyllic life with his gentle, widowed mother and his loving nurse, Peggotty. Then tragedy strikes when Mr. Murdstone weds David's mother and drives her to an early grave. Despised by his stepfather, the boy is forced to live in misery and poverty until he runs away to throw himself upon the mercy of his eccentric aunt. Charles Dickens's classic tale of growing up.
2) Bleak House
Author
Publication Date
1853
Lexile Measure
660L
Summary
Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It...
Author
Publication Date
1930
Lexile Measure
990L
Summary
A young orphan, Oliver is left to fend for himself until he is befriended by a band of young thieves who quickly train him in their craft. But Oliver is not content to be a thief for he knows that life holds great joys and true happiness cannot be stolen, but must be earned.
Author
Series
Publication Date
1955
Lexile Measure
1060L
Summary
In the depressed mill town of Coketown, schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind lives to impose his version of education: feeding the mind while starving the soul and spirit. Inflexible and unyielding, he places conformity above curiosity, and logic over sentiment, only to have his philosophy warp and destroy the lives of his own family. 'Hard Times' is Dickens's scathing portrait of Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy.
Author
Series
Publication Date
1895
Lexile Measure
750L
Summary
Little Nell Trent lives in the quiet gloom of the old curiosity shop with her ailing grandfather, for whom she cares with selfless devotion. But when they are unable to pay their debts to the stunted, lecherous and demonic money-lender Daniel Quilp, the shop is seized and they are forced to flee, thrown into a shadowy world in which there seems to be no safe haven. Dickens's portrayal of the innocent, tragic Nell made The Old Curiosity Shop an instant...
Author
Series
Publication Date
1913
Lexile Measure
900L
Appears on list
Summary
"In one of the most popular holiday stories of all time, meet Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly old man who hates Christmas and all the people asking for money that the holiday brings. One fateful Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, who warns him about the consequences of his path of greed. This visit is followed by appearances from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, bearing their own messages...
8) Oliver Twist
Author
Publication Date
1941
Lexile Measure
940L
Summary
Adentures of an orphan boy who lives in the squalid surroundings of a nineteenth-century English workhouse until he becomes involved with a gang of thieves.
Author
Publication Date
1939
Lexile Measure
1090L
Summary
Great Expectations is among the most masterful of Charles Dickens's novels. Displaying extraordinary tragicomic range, Dickens blends an atmosphere of brooding violence and guilt with sharp and often disturbing humor to create a drama charged with the thrilling intensity of a detective story and the poignancy of a spiritual autobiography. Much of the novel's power comes from Dickens's unequaled skill at making even the most wildly eccentric of characters...
Author
Publication Date
1859
Lexile Measure
720L
Summary
A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens's great historical novel, set against the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author's novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores...
Author
Series
Publication Date
1860
Lexile Measure
1210L
Summary
Few first novels have created as much popular excitement as The Pickwick Papers?-a comic masterpiece that catapulted its 24-year-old author to immediate fame. Readers were captivated by the adventures of the poet Snodgrass, the lover Tupman, the sportsman Winkle &, above all, by that quintessentially English Quixote, Mr Pickwick, & his cockney Sancho Panza, Sam Weller. From the hallowed turf of Dingley Dell Cricket Club to the unholy fracas of the...
14) Little Dorrit
Author
Series
Publication Date
1860
Lexile Measure
760L
Summary
The daughter of an imprisoned debtor suffers injustices of nineteenth-century English society.
Author
Series
Publication Date
1911
Lexile Measure
1160L
Summary
The Pickwick Club was founded by the most learned minds in London for the purpose of making a scientific tour of the world. No sooner have the distinguished members begun their historic journey than they are set upon by a charming but notorious con man. So begins a series of hilarious misadventures that takes the incorrigibly innocent Pickwicks wandering around England, coming in contact with some of the most colorful and comical characters in all...
Author
Publication Date
1922
Summary
John Harmon returns to England as his father's heir. Believed drowned under suspicious circumstances--a situation convenient to his wish for anonymity--John evaluates Bella Wilfer whom he must marry to secure his inheritance. The story is filled with colorful Victorian characters and incidents -- the faded aristocrats and parvenus gathered at the Veneering's dinner table, Betty Higden and her terror of the workhouse and the greedy plottings of Silas...
Author
Series
Publication Date
1911
Lexile Measure
780L
Summary
"Nicholas Nickleby is the son of a poor country gentleman, and has to make his own way in the world. He first goes as usher to Mr. Squeers, schoolmaster at Dotheboys Hall, in Yorkshire, but leaves in disgust with the tyranny of Squeers and his wife, especially to a poor boy named Smike. Smike runs away from his school to follow Nicholas, and remains his humble follower till death. At Portsmouth, Nicholas joins the theatrical company of Mr. Crummies,...
18) Dombey and Son
Author
Publication Date
1907
Lexile Measure
1210L
Summary
Charles Dickens was an English short story writer, dramatist, essayist, and the most popular novelist to come out of the Victorian era. Many of his novels, with their frequent concern for social reform, were first published in magazines in serial form under the pseudonym, Boz. Unlike authors who completed entire novels before serialization, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialized. The continuing popularity of his novels and...
Author
Publication Date
1896
Summary
HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories... This heart-warming collection of festive short stories and novellas perfectly captures the spirit of Christmas. Focused on the journeys taken through life and the inherent goodness of mankind, these tales explore the true meaning...
Author
Publication Date
1935
Lexile Measure
1040L
Summary
Regarded by Charles Dickens as his best novel upon publication, "Martin Chuzzlewit" relates a tale of familial selfishness and eventual moral redemption. First published serially from 1842 to 1844, it is the story of young Martin Chuzzlewit, who has been raised by his grandfather. He has fallen in love with his grandfather's ward and caretaker, the young orphan Mary Graham. Martin's grandfather does not approve and young Martin alienates himself from...
