Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in 20 monthly instalments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon. The story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. Memorable characters include the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn, the friendly, but depressive John Jarndyce, and the childish and disingenuous Harold Skimpole, as well as the likeable but imprudent Richard Carstone.
Hard Times - For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book appraises English society and is aimed at highlighting the social and economic pressures of the times.
Hard Times is unusual in several respects. It is by far the shortest of Dickens' novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written before and after it. Also, unlike all but one of his other novels, Hard Times has neither a preface, nor illustrations. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town, in some ways similar to Manchester, though smaller. Coketown may be partially based upon 19th-century Preston.
One of Dickens' reasons for writing Hard Times was that sales of his weekly periodical, Household Words, were low, and it was hoped its publication in instalments would boost circulation, as indeed proved to be the case. Since publication it has received a mixed response from critics, such as F.R. Leavis, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Macaulay, mainly focusing on Dickens's treatment of trade unions and his post-Industrial Revolution pessimism regarding the divide between Capitalist mill owners and undervalued workers during the Victorian era.
A Tale of Two Cities (1859) 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 most notable are Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton. Darnay is a French once-aristocrat who falls victim to the indiscriminate wrath of the revolution despite his virtuous nature, and Carton is a dissipated British barrister who endeavours to redeem his ill-spent life out of his unrequited love for Darnay's wife. 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.
I lived a happy life ‘til I was ten years old
When debt landed dad in prison and our country house
was sold
Lunched with a lady in her London flat so cold
Worked at a good polish factory, labelling jars quite
Donald told
Goodness only knows
I was a miserable soul
For a time I went to school but then I found a job
As a clerk to a lawyer, oh it made my poor head throb
I failed to be an actor, despite my loud gob
Ended up reporting speeches of the parliamentary mob
Then as everybody knows
I started writing pros
Put my life into my books
Friends and enemies and crooks
Legal bosses of the crop
In “The Old Curiosity Shop”
Fagin in “Oliver Twist”
A factory pal, you get the gist
And although my memory’s quite foggy
Got Scrooge from the grave of Ebenezer Scroggy
My first book was an overnight sensation
But I drove myself too hard to enjoy the agilation
Despite my wealth, my family begged for money
I wrote of it in “Chuzzlewit” which people said was
funny
Didn’t sell like books before
My family still asked for more
“Little Dorrit” is a tale
About my dad in debtor’s jail
While “Hard Times” tells my life ‘bout
When I tried to leave my wife
“Little Nell’s” here was my poor dear
Departed sister-in-law
And “David Copperfield”, working in a factory
I must confess that that was really me
In my life, felt shamed ‘bout poverty in childhood
Wrote about sadness, suffering and fears
Also wrote about people with funny names
Bumble, Smallweed, Scrooge, Uriah Heep
And Wackford Squeers
Whilst writing “Edwin Drood”
Train crashed in, helped my mood
Still I drove myself on
With readings far across the pond
Died before I wrote Drood’s end
Something drove me ‘round the bend
So Dickens, take a dickens, take a bow
And Heaven knows
Imagination runs wild
You turn to pages
Blank and white
Stain them with ink
Seeping through
(Read for me) Read for
(Read for me) Read for me
Bold, and always aware
Underlining the italic horizon
Painting pictures
With words
(Read for me) Read for
(Read for me) Read for me
Your imagination is our food
Our will to read on
Will Intrigue us
(and suck us in)
We are your children
Recreate and animate
Lost times
The past (the past)
The future (the future)
(Read for me) Read for
(Read for me) Read for me
As we wait
In the dark
Seeking light
This is your world
And We read
On and on and on
As we read
In the dark
Seeking light
Images painted in black
Seeping through
As you are