Charles Dickens Audio Books

Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870) was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Charles Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic novels and characters.

Many of his writings were originally published serially, in monthly instalments, a format of publication which Dickens himself helped popularise. Unlike other authors who completed novels before serialisation, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialised. The practice lent his stories a particular rhythm, punctuated by cliffhangers to keep the public looking forward to the next instalment. The continuing popularity of his novels and short stories is such that they have never gone out of print.

Dickens's work has been highly praised for its realism, comedy, mastery of prose, unique personalities and concern for social reform, by writers such as Leo Tolstoy, George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton; though others, such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf, have criticised it for melodrama, sentimentality and implausibility.

Read more about Charles Dickens at Wikipedia

Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Oliver is led to the lair of their elderly criminal trainer Fagin, naively unaware of their unlawful activities.

Oliver Twist is notable for Dickens' unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives.[1] The book exposed the cruel treatment of many a waif-child in London, which increased international concern in what is sometimes known as "The Great London Waif Crisis": the large number of orphans in London in the Dickens era. The book's subtitle, The Parish Boy's Progress, alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and also to a pair of popular 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, "A Rake's Progress" and "A Harlot's Progress".[2]

An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public's attention to various contemporary evils, including the Poor Law, child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals. Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of his time by surrounding the novel's serious themes with sarcasm and dark humour. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of hardships as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own early youth as a child labourer contributed to the story's development.

Oliver Twist has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations, and is the basis for a highly successful musical play, and the multiple Academy Award winning 1968 motion picture made from it.

Read more about Oliver Twist at Wikipedia

Charles dickens on Credit:

- Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.

Charles Dickens on Character:

- Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

Charles Dickens on Freedom:

- I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

Charles dickens on Age:

- Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

One of the interesting facts about Charles Dickens is, that he originally wrote all his works as serials, and only now can we get them as finished books. If you would have lived during his time, you would have had to wait for the next installment, just as you now perhaps are waiting for the next serial of you favorite TV show:

Novels by Charles Dickens

- The Pickwick Papers (Monthly serial, April 1836 to November 1837)[34]
- The Adventures of Oliver Twist (Monthly serial in Bentley's Miscellany, February 1837 to April 1839)
- The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (Monthly serial, April 1838 to October 1839)
- The Old Curiosity Shop (Weekly serial in Master Humphrey's Clock, 25 April 1840, to 6 February 1841)
- Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty (Weekly serial in Master Humphrey's Clock, 13 February 1841, to 27 November 1841)
- The Christmas books:
-- A Christmas Carol (1843)
-- The Chimes (1844)
-- The Cricket on the Hearth (1845)
-- The Battle of Life (1846)
-- The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848)
- The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (Monthly serial, January 1843 to July 1844)
- Dombey and Son (Monthly serial, October 1846 to April 1848)
- David Copperfield (Monthly serial, May 1849 to November 1850)
- Bleak House (Monthly serial, March 1852 to September 1853)
- Hard Times: For These Times (Weekly serial in Household Words, 1 April 1854, to 12 August 1854)
- Little Dorrit (Monthly serial, December 1855 to June 1857)
- A Tale of Two Cities (Weekly serial in All the Year Round, 30 April 1859, to 26 November 1859)
- Great Expectations (Weekly serial in All the Year Round, 1 December 1860 to 3 August 1861)
- Our Mutual Friend (Monthly serial, May 1864 to November 1865)
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Monthly serial, April 1870 to September 1870. Only six of twelve planned numbers completed)
- The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices (1890)