Showing results by author "Charles Dickens" in All Categories

On New Year’s Eve, Trotty becomes disheartened with life and feels that the working classes are wicked by nature after so many report of crime and mortality. His daughter, Meg, announces her plans to marry her fiancé on New Year's Day, something that Trotty is not particularly happy about. After meeting Will and his niece Lilian, the group return to Trotty's house. During the night, Trotty feels the church bells are calling him, so heads to the tower and climbs up to the bell chamber.

Orson Welles stars in this dramatisation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

The timeless tale of Ebenezer Scrooge and his adventures on Christmas Eve continue to teach an important lesson, even to this day. Author Charles Dickens introduces us to the main character by painting him in a negative light, a selfish and miserly old man who will barely pay enough money to keep his office heated. When Scrooge returns home after work, the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, visits him and tells him that because of the wrongdoing he had done during his life, he has been condemned to walk in his ghost years shackled....

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore are as different as England and America themselves, and yet almost two centuries later these two iconic tales remain an important part of Christmas tradition all over the world. Now they are brought together in this very special holiday recording.

The Pickwick Papers was Charles Dickens earliest success. Written when Dickens was in his mid-20s, this charming and amusing story would be well-received by both critics and fans alike. Dickens introduces the listener to a number of classic characters in such a way that the listener is unwittingly lured into a world of hilarious adventure.

"The Chimes" is Charles Dickens 1844 novella that concerns the disillusionment of Toby "Trotty" Veck, a poor working-class man. When Trotty has lost his faith in Humanity and believes that his poverty is the result of his unworthiness he is visited on New Year's Eve by spirits to help restore his faith and show him that nobody is born evil, but rather that crime and poverty are things created by man.

A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is set in Paris and London, firmly placed in the period leading up to and including the French Revolution to the subsequent Reign of Terror. It's primarily the tale of Doctor Alexandre Manette, who is unjustly imprisoned in the Bastille for 18 years; his daughter, Lucie Manette, who believes him to be dead; two men who both fall in love with her; and the supporters or foes of the family who, for their own reasons, love or despise them.

Elevé à la mort de ses parents par le redoutable dragon domestique que le Ciel lui a donné pour sœur, Pip (Philip Pirrip) semble promis à l'existence obscure d'un jeune villageois sans fortune. C'est compter sans la bienveillance des divinités tutélaires qui veillent sur son enfance. Car Pip a le privilège de vivre au milieu de créatures singulières dont l'existence seule accrédite la croyance au miracle.

A superbly crafted Dickens classic, masterfully narrated - a ghostly apparition supervises the trial of his murderer.

First published in 1843, Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol achieved instant success. Laurence Olivier both narrates the tale and stars as Ebenezer Scrooge, “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!” His wretched clerk, Bob Cratchit, is paid so meagre a wage that he cannot help his sickly son, Tiny Tim.

"She? That’s Little Dorrit. She’s nothing. She’s just a whim.’ Poor Little Dorrit. Her future looks as bleak as her past and her present. Born and brought up in a debtors’ prison, she relies on her sewing skills to help support her father. Little does she know that her sewing will soon present an opportunity for change. When change arrives in the form of Arthur Clennam, it is accompanied by secrets and dangers. Who is he? What are his motives for wanting to help Little Dorrit?

First published in monthly parts between October 1846 and April 1848, it tells the story of Paul Dombey a heartless London merchant who runs his domestic affairs as he runs his business. In his daily life there is no room for dealing with emotions because emotion has no market value. In his son he sees the future of his firm and the continuation of his name, while he neglects his affectionate daughter, until he decides to get rid of her beloved, a lowly clerk.

Published between 1840 and 1841, it is Dickens' first attempt at an historical novel, his only other being A Tale of Two Cities. Full of classic Dickensian characters, the plot is based on the "no-popery" or Gordon riots of 1780 seen through the eyes of the good-hearted idiot Barnaby Rudge.

Dans l'Angleterre victorienne, Oliver Twist, jeune orphelin angélique, est recueilli par l'assistance ; il est placé chez M. et Mme Sowerberry, fabricant de cercueils et croque-mort de son état. Là, il ne connaît que privations et mauvais traitements. Oliver endure tout, jusqu'au jour où une provocation d'un apprenti le pousse à se battre puis à s'enfuir vers Londres.

On a freezing, bleak Christmas Eve in London, the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge sits in his counting house, resenting the holiday and all who celebrate it. But, contrary to what he has planned for, Mr. Scrooge won't be spending the evening alone. He's about to get a visit from a very old friend--one he thought he'd never see again.

Charles Dickens was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.

THE NOBLE SAVAGE: To come to the point at once, I beg to say that I have not the least belief in the Noble Savage.

Toby Veck is a humble porter who has lost his faith in humanity. Then high up in a church steeple, where spiders spin their castles in the air, the spirit of the bells appear to take Toby on a New Year's Eve journey where he discovers all he has to be grateful for.

The long, drawn-out case of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce provides the background to this novel, which takes us into Dickens' world of impoverished people on the street, lovers fallen on hard times, and the grand riches of the upper classes. It is read movingly by Sean Barrett.

A chilling collection of ghost stories containing Rats by MR James, The Raven and Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe, The Birthday of the Infanta by Oscar Wilde, A Tough Tussle by Ambrose Bierce and The Signalman by Charles Dickens. In Rats, Mr Thompson comes to regret his decision to investigate a locked room in a country inn, and in The Signalman, the subject of the story is haunted by ghostly appearances that always precede tragic events.

Mr. Redlaw is a chemistry professor tormented by painful memories of the sorrow, wrong, and trouble he has suffered in his life. On Christmas Eve, he is visited by a phantom, the double of himself, who offers him the gift of forgetting these painful memories. The catch is that others who come into contact with the professor will also lose the remembrance of their past hurts and sorrows. Redlaw is hesitant at first but, believing his life will be better and happier, he accepts the ghost's bargain.