The sensational bestselling story of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, seems to belong less to the history of the Victorian novel than to folklore, fairy tale, or myth. The sorrows of Nell and her grandfather are offset by Dickens's creation of a dazzling contemporary world inhabited by some of his most brilliantly drawn characters-the eloquent ne'er-do-well Dick Swiveller; the hungry maid known as the "Marchioness";...

Four members of a nineteenth-century London social club journey to places outside the city and become involved in romantic adventures and a few legal scrapes.

After John Harmon is murdered on his way to marry Bella Wilfer and receive a large inheritance, his father's assistant, Nicodemus Boffin, becomes the new heir and adopts Bella, who evokes an uncommon interest from Boffin's assistant.

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the aging Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained...

A strict father teaches his children to value education and logic above human emotion, which leads to unintended consequences.

Combines Dickens' contributions to two periodicals and other selected publications.