Mr Pickwick, founder of the Pickwick Club, sets out with his three friends, Tupman, Snodgrass, and Winkle, to observe the world. They intend to travel to places in England remote from London, and observe their findings which they send back to the Club. In their journeys, they continually get themselves into all sorts of difficult but comical situations, from which they must extricate themselves, often with the assistance of Mr Pickwick’s personal servant, Sam Weller.
29 Hours and 50 Minutes
The tale of John Peerybingle, the good-hearted carrier, and his young wife Mary (‘Dot’), interwoven with the story of poor toymaker Caleb Plummer, his beloved blind daughter Bertha, and the harsh old toy merchant Tackleton, who is due to marry May Fielding, a childhood friend of Dot. Comic relief is provided by Tilly Slowboy, the disaster-prone nursemaid of John and Dot’s baby, and Boxer, the family dog. The cricket who chirps on the family hearth assumes fairy form to save the day when disaster looms in the form of a mysterious stranger. Sentimental? Certainly – but this, the third (1845) of Dickens’ short Christmas books, is as charming and irresistible as its predecessors A Christmas Carol (1843) and The Chimes (1844).
The novella is subdivided into chapters called ‘Chirps’, similar to the ‘Quarters’ of The Chimes or the ‘Staves’ of A Christmas Carol.
3 Hours and 53 Minutes
"Please sir, I want some more," the famous line spoken by Oliver Twist at age nine, becomes the tipping point of a huge change in Oliver's life. He is soon captured into the service of Fagin and his gang of pick-pocketing boys. But, Mr. Brownlow saves him from arrest, and for the first time in his young life Oliver finds comfort and caring. Unfortunately, he is recaptured into the seedy and disgusting world he had escaped, and meets with Bill Sykes, a dangerous criminal. There are numerous delightful or wicked characters that carry the story along, such as the Artful Dodger-- a boy of the streets under Fagin, Mr. Bumble the Beadle, looking for ways to get rid of Oliver, Nancy who makes a fateful betrayal, and the Maylies, whose affection Oliver craves. The author's descriptions of the back street life in London, bring us full force into the crushing poverty and the terrible way in which poor people were treated during that time. Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist as a serial in 1837, and it is considered one of the most popular in English literature.
14 Hours and 54 Minutes.
In one of Charles Dickens’ most beloved stories, Philip Pirrip, known as “Pip”, narrates his own journey, from the hindsight of 50 years.
Pip grows up with his older sister after losing his parents at a very early age. His sister, a tough unloving woman, rules Pip and her gentle husband Joe with an iron hand. During Pip’s 7th year, while playing in the marshes, he is accosted by an escaped criminal whom he decides to help by stealing food from his own home. But the convict is caught and returned to prison.
Miss Havisham, an eccentric, rich recluse, sends for Pip to come to her house to play with Estella, a haughty and rude girl about his age. Although Pip is ashamed of himself as a poor uneducated boy, he is fascinated by Estella. A few years later, he becomes apprenticed to Joe, a blacksmith, but dreams of becoming rich and clever and marrying Estella. A stranger, Mr. Jaggers, arrives to inform him that he has come into a handsome property, and will be removed from his present home to be brought up as a gentleman. The benefactor is kept secret, but Pip is sure it must be Miss Havisham.
In London, he acquires a tutor, grand new clothes and the lifestyle he always wanted. However, life is complicated as a gentleman in society, and he finds himself very unhappy, as Estella remains indifferent to him, involved with someone else. Pip begins overspending his generous allowance, and worse, spurns his old friends. Then unexpected problems from his past arise, and begin to transform his attitude.
19 Hours and 58 Minutes.
The story is told almost entirely from the point of view of the first person narrator, David Copperfield himself, and was the first Dickens novel to be written as such a narration. The story deals with the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. David’s father had died six months before he was born, and seven years later, his mother remarries but David and his step-father don’t get on and he is sent to boarding school. As David settles into life we are taken along with him and meet a dazzling array of characters, some of whom we will never forget and some of whom we won’t want to remember!
31 Hours and 58 Minutes.
The miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is a cold-hearted man of business and has little time for the good humor and charity of the Christmas season. But that’s about to change. A visit from his deceased business partner sets in motion a night in which Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. Will he listen to their messages? Will he heed their warnings? Ebenezer Scrooge is about to take a Christmas journey that he won’t soon forget. A Christmas Carol is an enduring classic Christmas tale that has captured hearts and imaginations for generations.
3 Hours and 10 Minutes.
A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during the same time period. It follows the lives of several protagonists through these events. The 45-chapter novel was published in 31 weekly installments in Dickens’ new literary periodical titled All the Year Round. From April 1859 to November 1859, Dickens also republished the chapters as eight monthly sections in green covers. Dickens’ previous novels had appeared only as monthly installments. The first weekly installment of A Tale of Two Cities ran in the first issue of All the Year Round on 30 April 1859. The last ran thirty weeks later, on 26 November.
15 Hours and 18 Minutes.
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