Charles Dickens

Young Pip, an orphan boy, apprenticed to the village blacksmith, yearns to be a gentleman. Suddenly a mysterious person wills him a fortune and he leaves his village to be educated as a rich gentleman. Pip longs to marry Estella, beautiful ward of the eccentric Miss Havisham. But Pip's new life is shattered by the re-appearance of Magwitch, a convict who once forced him to steal. Will Magwitch's demands spell the end of Pip's "great expectations?"...

A classic tale of an orphan growing up in the 1800's of England. Intimately rooted in the author's own biography and written as a first-person narrative, "David Copperfield" charts a young man's progress through a difficult childhood in Victorian England to ultimate success as a novelist, finding true love along the way. Jeremy Tambling's provocative Introduction reveals subtle themes relevant today in Dickens' favorite work.

Through the intervention of four ghosts, Ebenezer Scrooge is shown the spirit of Christmas.

Little Dorrit grows up in Marshalsea prison, where her father is confined for his debts, and she helps to feed the family with her needlework until her father receives an inheritance when she is in her teens, and more problems ensue.

A rich and pompous merchant is plagued by lonliness and misfortune.

The larger-than-life Mr. Pickwick, a benevolent and well-to-do gentleman, travels about the country righting wrongs and occasionally--but unintentionally--wreaking havoc. Accompanying him is his faithful valet Sam Weller, and crossing paths with the Pickwickians is comic villain Alfred Jingle, whose misadventures repeatedly land the group in trouble.