Bøker av Dickens

On Christmas Eve, around 1812, Pip, an orphan who is about six years old, encounters an escaped convict in the village churchyard while visiting the graves of his mother, father, and siblings. The convict scares Pip into stealing food and a file to grind away his shackles, from the home he shares with his abusive older sister and her kind, passive husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith. The next day, soldiers recapture the convict while he is engaged in a fight with another convict; the two are returned to the prison ships from which they escaped. Miss Havisham asks Pip's uncle to find a boy to play with her adopted daughter Estella. Pip begins to visit Miss Havisham and Estella, with whom he falls in love, with Miss Havisham's encouragement. Later, when Pip is a young apprentice at Joe's blacksmith shop, a lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, approaches him and tells him he is to receive a large sum of money from an anonymous benefactor and must immediately leave for London, where he is to become a gentleman...

Charles Dickens’s tenth novel, which was first published serially in Dickens’s own periodical journal “Household Words” in 1854, “Hard Times,” is a work that sought to highlight the social and economic divide that was growing between capitalistic mill owners and workers during the Victorian era of Great Britain. Set in the fictitious Coketown, “Hard Times” is a critical examination of the poor working conditions in many English factory towns of the time as well as the changing nature of the aristocracy and the working-class in the second half of the 19th century. The novel centers on the lives of Thomas Gradgrind, senior, the superintendent of the local school, his children, Louisa and Thomas, junior, and Sissy Jupe, a free-spirited circus girl who struggles to fit in as a student under the rigidly utilitarian instruction of the Gradgrind school. Through the lives of Gradgrind’s children, Dickens’s seeks to criticize the failure of excessively utilitarian philosophy which was so prevalent during his time. As Louisa finds herself in an unhappy marriage and Thomas, junior, descends into a life of moral corruption, their father begins to realize the shortcomings of the philosophy that he has so rigidly applied in raising them. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper and includes an introduction by Edwin Percy Whipple.

A landmark work whose setting is staged in the time of the French Revolution. It takes place in both London and Paris where two men are born that look similar and many roles start to be played out as the men are tried and tested throughout the book. Eventually in order to restore him to his family in London, the one man is freed by his Paris look-a-like so that the French imposter can stand trial and be executed by the revolting peasants for crimes the other man did not commit. Freedom comes at a price.

"Its impressive eloquence, its unfeigned lightness of heart, its playful and sparkling humour, its gentle spirit of humanity" all put the reader "in good humour with ourselves, with each other, with the season and with the author." -- The Illustrated London News A Christmas Carol was "a national benefit and to every man or woman who reads it, a personal kindness." - Thackeray Contains John Leech's original illustrations (b/w). Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in six weeks, at the end of 1843, during a particularly intense time of creativity. He was suffering financial difficulties and was determined to have the manuscript ready for publication for the Christmas market. This book contains a clear copy of Dickens' one and only handwritten manuscript, with his revisions and corrections evident on every page. The revisions show how Dickens made the verbs become more active and reduced the number of words, thereby achieving greater immediacy and vividness. The manuscript was published on 19th December, 1843, and sold out on Christmas Eve, 1843. Ebenezer Scrooge, a bitter miser, hates Christmas and everything it stands for, but the ghosts of Christmas past, Christmas present and Christmas future terrify him and thaw his frozen heart. A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843, has captured the public imagination, and is now itself part of the Christmas tradition, warming the heart like mince pies and mulled wine. This edition contains John Leech's eight original illustrations in black and white. Essential reading wherever Christmas is celebrated. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is generally considered the greatest English novelist of the Victorian era. At the centenary of his death, critical opinion placed him second only to Shakespeare. His many novels include David Copperfield, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity during his lifetime than any other author had. His work appealed to both the simple and the sophisticated and he rapidly achieved worldwide fame. His vividly detailed writing, his compassion, and his forensic depiction of his society and its shortcomings enriched his novels and made him both one of the great forces in nineteenth century literature and the conscience of his age.