• Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. – New York : Penguin Books, 1980.

Bleak House is the story of the Jarndyce family, who wait in vain to inherit money from a disputed fortune in the settlement of the extremely long-running lawsuit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The novel is pointedly critical of England’s Court of Chancery, in which cases could drag on through decades of convoluted legal maneuvering.

  • Dickens, Charles. Great expectations. – Ware : Wordsworth, 2000.

Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It is Dickens's second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person.The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861.The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is full of extreme imagery – poverty, prison ships and chains, and fights to the death – and has a colourful cast of characters who have entered popular culture. These include the eccentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold Estella, and Joe, the unsophisticated and kind blacksmith. Dickens's themes include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil. Great Expectations, which is popular both with readers and literary critics, has been translated into many languages.

  • Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. – L. : Penguin Books, 1973.

The novel is a bitter indictment of industrialization, with its dehumanizing effects on workers and communities in mid-19th-century England.

Louisa and Tom Gradgrind have been harshly raised by their father, an educator, to know nothing but the most factual, pragmatic information. Their lives are devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination, and the two have little or no empathy for others. Louisa marries Josiah Bounderby, a vulgar banker and mill owner. She eventually leaves her husband and returns to her father’s house. Tom, unscrupulous and vacuous, robs his brother-in-law’s bank. Only after these and other crises does their father realize that the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their lives.

  • Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield : adapted for young readers. – New York : Peter Haddock LTD. Bridlington, Publishers, 1979.

The story is told in the first person by a middle-aged David Copperfield, who is looking back on his life. David is born in Blunderstone, Suffolk, six months after the death of his father, and he is raised by his mother and her devoted housekeeper, Clara Peggotty. As a young child, he spends a few days with Peggotty at the home of her brother, Mr. Peggotty, in Yarmouth, which Mr. Peggotty shares with Ham and Emily, his orphaned nephew and niece, respectively. When the visit ends, David learns that his mother has married the cruel and controlling Mr. Edward Murdstone. That evening Murdstone’s sister also moves in and assumes the management of the household.

Orphaned at a young age and abandoned by a cruel stepfather, David Copperfield struggles to make a life for himself. Follow him through the unhappiness and brutality of his childhood… the friendships he makes in his teen years… the pressures of starting out on a career… the betrayal by a boyhood friend… the treachery of a jealous co-worker… the silliness of youthful love… and the final discovery of complete happiness.

  • Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. – New York : Dover Publications, Inc., 1991.

A Christmas Carol recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.