Charles Dickens

[Angela9]

Please help me to know where to start. I have never read anything by Dickens.

I have worked my way through a lot of Dickens this year and found it quite mixed. I LOVED Great Expectations, enjoyed Oliver Twist and a Tale of Two Cities but some of the others (Hard Times, Bleak House) I found quite hard going and I don't really enjoy the dialogue.

It's a great car and a great piece. Where to start? I don't even remember how our "acquaintance" began

I'm conflicted tbh, what was the name of the young man who loved her so, son of the prison keepers?

John Chivery? He was nice but a bit wet.

I must get round to reading a proper biography of Dickens. I recently watched the dvd of a drama-documentary made by the BBC about his life. Peter Ackroyd is the narrator and there are "interviews" with Dickens, Mrs Dickens, his children, etc. based on their own words.

It's quite interesting and has the added bonus of Anton Lesser giving a stellar performance as Dickens and Geoffrey Palmer as a rather waspish Thackeray.

Another time of year my response would be different, but it's got to be A Christmas Carol! Yes the story is familiar but the writing really is beautiful - and very funny in places. The tangent about doornails always makes me chuckle.

Oliver Twist is great, it's pure soap opera really.

Also - if you find yourself skim reading some of the descriptive passages, just remind yourself he was paid by the word

PegHughes try Claire Tomalin’s biography, it’s very good. Michael Slater is the great Dickens expert and his biography’s excellent, but massively detailed and a proper doorstop.

Dickens was the classic flawed genius. He treated his poor wife appallingly, casting her aside for a younger model after she’d borne him umpteen children, not to mention the miscarriages. An analyst would have an absolute field day with him. And yet he’s a superb writer....

Agree that Our Mutual Friend is a masterpiece. Maybe not the best one to start with, though - perhaps Nicholas Nickleby or A Christmas Carol ?

Do you think Oliver Twist or Great Expectations would be too much for an almost twelve year old? DD recently read A Christmas Carol after discovering to her horror the play version she’s studying at school is, in her words, a “dumbed down” version (she’s very much a literary purest). She really enjoyed it but I’m hesitant to suggest she moves on to the longer novels in case she gets bogged down and put off.

For context she mostly reads older children’s or young adult books, the only adult books she’s read to date are Agatha Christie and Terry Pratchett.

Dombey & Son is my absolute favourite

I think she'd cope with Oliver Twist, Bark, but it's been ages since I read Great Expectations so wouldn't want to say on that one.

I remember reading Great Expectations at secondary school, so a similar age to your DD, Bark . It was about a thousand years ago, though

Interesting reading people’s favourites. I LOVE Bleak House but found Great Expectations pretty dull.

Great Expectations is my absolute favourite.

Thanks. I realise I’m piggybacking on someone else’s thread, but I didn’t want to start my own and be accused of stealth boasting. I’m really not, DD is a voracious reader and I try to find things to suggest she tries now she’s at secondary and has access to a big library.

Cedilla Thank you for those recommendations. I've just added them to my Goodreads tbr - though I'm not sure if I'll ever have the time to tackle the Slater biography. I read much more slowly than I used to.

I do find it upsetting how very badly he treated his wife. Poor woman

I read David Copperfield when I was 10. Not sure how much I took in, to be honest, but I got to the end and was not put off, quite the contrary! I really, really enjoyed The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins) in the first year of secondary school and have re-read it several times since. Not unlike Dickens but also one of the earliest detective novels.

Dickens and Collins were great mates, Gaspode ....Collins was another one with an, ahem, irregular personal life. He was in relationships with two of them, simultaneously, but married to neither.

Yes, I read a fascinating memoir of Thackeray's daughter which talked about all the famous people she knew growing up and then the next generation of famous people she got to know through her sister's marriage to Virginia Woolf's father. I rather liked the sound of Trollope. He had a rough start in life - his parents' marriage and approach to their son's upbringing would have kept the relationships board going for months - but as far as I know he was remarkably unscathed. Another terrific writer, of course, with the additional distinction of having invented the pillar box.

Hard Times was (is?) the required book for the Open University curriculum for starting its arts / humanities degree. Sorry if that's incoherent, I think I'm getting a migraine 😱

It's an awesome book.

I must admit that I've always thought it would have been fun to go for a pint with Trollope. More so than Dickens, anyway.
Although the hunting talk might have got a bit tedious.

Didn't he regret inventing the letter box subsequently?

Yes John Chivery. Thanks Peg

According to the biography I've got, written, literally, by his friends, he was much more fun and full of energy when he was younger.

I think a biography written by his wife would tell a very different story tbh. But yes, he was the life and soul as a younger man.

Oliver Twist, Christmas Carol, are my favourites. So start there.

The Pickwick Papers. Wonderful characters & a fun one to start with.

Yes Daily he was the first proper detective novel writer wasn't he?