If you were reading Charles Dickens for the first time....

[Theknitwitch]

... what would you read.
Thanks

David copperfield.

Great Expectations- couldn't finish Oliver Twist (and I've read a fair few 19th century tomes)

Oliver Twist or David Copperfield.

Great Expectations has the best plot complete with twist so feels most like a modern novel imo. Christmas Carol because it's short and fairly familiar.

David Copperfield after that.

I don't think Hard Times is very typical of Dickens so I would say not that one.

Oliver Twist

Only read David Copperfield - first couple hundred pages were quite entertaining, and the last couple hundred were the biting satire Dickens is famous for, but the 600 in between were mawkish dross (basically from the time DC falls in love to the obvious plot twist).

I thought The Old Curiosity Shop was a good read.

Either David Copperfield or Great Expectations

Great Expectations.

I love Barnaby Rudge. But for a first go A Christmas Carol.
He can be hard going!

Hard Times

Our Mutual Friend
Hard Times
David Copperfield
Nicholas Nicholby

Love A Tale of Two Cities but very different to the rest. Cannot get through Barnaby Rudge or The Old Curiosity Shop.

Lucky person, reading for the first time.

Tale of 2 cities.

Great Expectations without question. It's a lovely book. Much prefer it to David Copperfield. Best to start off with one that isn't too long as they can be off putting to the beginner on his journey through a style which needs some getting used to.

Dombey and Son (about a girl desperate to win the love of her father, who only cares for her younger brother).
or
Our Mutual Friend

But speaking personally if I was going for a writer if that era, I would choose Anthony Trollope.

The Barchester Chronicles is a series of six books which each stands alone, so although if you read them in sequence (the first is "The Warden") you will keep the chronology right and meet minor characters in later books who have been major ones it the earlier volumes, even if you read them out of sequence, they make sense and are a good, interesting and involving read. My favourite of the six is "The Small House at Allington" (I think it's number 4 in the series, but I'd have to check that.)

The same can be said of the "Palliser" novels i.e. each stands alone. Of these I like "The Eustace Diamonds" the best.

Enjoy your read, whatever you decide on.

I'd start with any one of them that hasn't already been spoilt by having it foisted on you by GCSE studies or well-meaning parents. Every one of them is brilliantly entertaining unless and until it gets tainted by the idea of reading it for anything other than pure pleasure.

Read Great Expectations in November.

Little Dorrit

Pickwick Papers

Got to be David Copperfield for me

Never 'The Old Curiosity Shop' though. Unreadable.

So many recommendations for Hard Times! I thought it was absolutely awful.

Great Expectations, because it's relatively short, but still a very enjoyable novel with a good twist.

I believe Hard Times is the shortest of his full-length novels but not quite as enjoyable.

Bleak House!

It's like a rollercoaster ride. Enough to rival any modern blockbuster.
If only they'd employ somebody to make each storyline into an individual novel and remove all the dreary references to the legal system of the day.