I don’t get to read as much as I would like due to where I am, but when possible I focus on what I regard as one of the greatest novelists of all time.
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Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) English author and social critic; he is regarded as the best commentator on social conditions in Victorian England. He became so famous that some of his expressions are still in common useage today. ‘Dickensian’ is still used to donate destitution and a ‘Scrooge’ for someone who is a miser.
Dickens is to the 19th century as Orwell is to the 20th, with his works, ‘Down and out in Paris and London’ (1933) and ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ (1938), or America’s Steinbeck and ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ (1939). All lead the reader through destitution, but Dickens’ differs in that he uses a sociological approach and his differing class characters each tell their story using their own moral relativism. All four books below are based on a rags to riches approach and what make Dickens different is that he takes the reader through the class system of each and details what life was like at each stage.
Dickens’ works are fiction but based on the social conditions of the English Victorian period and also describes the English class system perfectly as his narrative travels within the various social hierarchies.
My personal favourites are:
Great Expectations (1861)
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Oliver Twist (1838)
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David Copperfield (1850)
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A Christmas Carol (1843)
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All four works have been adapted into films, which lose none of the appeal of his written works.