Paper Books

A Child’s History of England, it first appeared in serial form in Household Words, running from 25 January 1851 to 10 December 1853. Dickens also published the work in book form in three volumes: the first volume on 20 December 1851, the second on 25 December 1852 and the third on 24 December 1853. ..

Adam Smith (1723-1790) was one of the brightest stars of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was his most important book. First published in London in March 1776, it had been eagerly anticipated by Smith's contemporaries and b..

The Adventure of the Empty HouseThe Adventure of the Norwood Builder The Adventure of the Dancing Men The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist The Adventure of the Priory School The Adventure of Black Peter The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton The Adventure of the Six Napoleons The Adventure of ..

A Scandal in BohemiaThe Red-Headed LeagueA Case of IdentityThe Boscombe Valley MysteryThe Five Orange PipsThe Man with The Twisted LipThe Adventure of the Blue CarbuncleThe Adventure of the Speckled BandThe Adventure of the Engineer’s ThumbThe Adventure of the Noble BachelorThe Adventure of the Bery..

Sketches by Boz is a collection of short pieces Charles Dickens originally published in various newspapers and other periodicals between 1833 and 1836. They were re-issued in book form, under their current title, in February and August 1836, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. The first complet..

Little Dorrit is a novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in serial form between 1855 and 1857. The story features Amy Dorrit, youngest child of her family, born and raised in the Marshalsea prison for debtors in London. Arthur Clennam encounters her after returning home from a 20-year absen..

Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirises the social and economic conditions of the era.Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is by far the shortest of Dickens’s novels, barely a quarter of the length of those writte..

Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens’s second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person..

David Copperfield, is a novel in the bildungsroman genre by Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from infancy to maturity. It was first published as a serial in 1849 and 1850, and as a book in 1850.David Copperfield is also an autobiog..

Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty is a historical novel by British novelist Charles Dickens. Barnaby Rudge was one of two novels (the other was The Old Curiosity Shop) that Dickens published in his short-lived (1840–1841) weekly serial Master Humphrey's Clock. Barnaby Rudge is largely set..

Dombey and Son is a novel by English author Charles Dickens. It follows the fortunes of a shipping firm owner, who is frustrated at the lack of a son to follow him in his footsteps; he initially rejects his daughter’s love before eventually becoming reconciled with her before his death.The story fea..

Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak Hous..

American Notes for General Circulation is a travelogue by Charles Dickens detailing his trip to North America from January to June 1842. While there he acted as a critical observer of North American society, almost as if returning a status report on their progress. This can be compared to the style ..

Captains Courageous is an 1897 novel, by Rudyard Kipling, that follows the adventures of fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne Jr., the spoiled son of a railroad tycoon, after he is saved from drowning by a Portuguese fisherman in the north Atlantic. The novel originally appeared as a serialisation in McCl..

The Lodger is a novel by English author Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes. The short story was first published in the January, 1911 edition of McClure’s Magazine, in 1911. Belloc Lowndes wrote a longer version of the story, which was published as a series in the Daily Telegraph in 1913 with the same nam..

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is an 1860 work on the Italian Renaissance by Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt. Together with his History of the Renaissance in Italy it is counted among the classics of Renaissance historiography. “Burkhardt sought to capture and define the spirit of the..

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 English children’s novel by Lewis Carroll.A young girl named Alice falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as a prime example of the literary nonsense genre. Its play with logic gives the story lasting popu..

A collection of three different stories that are true Gothic classics. The three stories, The Signal Man, The Haunted House and The Trial for Murder were sensational for their time and continue to hold up well, thanks to Charles Dickens' superb skills at storytelling. The Signal Man is the most well..

The Rosary by Florence L. Barclay, first published in 1909. The Rosary tells the story of Jane Champion and Garth Dalmain. The Honourable Jane is plain, exceedingly frank, and a fiercely loyal friend. In the words of Ms. Barclay, "She had once been described, by one who saw below the surface, as a p..

The Uncommercial Traveller is a collection of Literary sketches and reminiscences written by Charles Dickens, published in 1860-1861.In 1859 Dickens founded a new journal called All the Year Round and the Uncommercial Traveller articles would be among his main contributions. He seems to have chosen ..

A short and inspirational work by Charles Dickens written as a Christmas story. Outshined by Dickens much more well known Christmas story, this story has received scant notice. Written in the first person, Dickens tell of being a “poor traveller,” and discovering a humble inn during his travels. Set..

The Pickwick Papers is a sequence of loosely related adventures written for serialization in a periodical. The action is given as occurring 1827–28, though critics have noted some seeming anachronisms. For example, Dickens satirized the case of George Norton suing Lord Melbourne in 1836.The novel's ..

The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home is a novella by Charles Dickens, published by Bradbury and Evans, and released 20 December 1845 with illustrations by Daniel Maclise, John Leech, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield and Edwin Henry Landseer. Dickens began writing the book around 17 Octob..

The Old Curiosity Shop is one of two novels (the other being Barnaby Rudge) which Charles Dickens published along with short stories in his weekly serial Master Humphrey's Clock, from 1840 to 1841. It was so popular that New York readers stormed the wharf when the ship bearing the final instalment a..

The first of three Holly Trees opened in Chicago in June 1872, and Gollin says that “over the next few years dozens of other Holly Trees opened in other cities, many of them after consultation with Annie.” An 1874 New York Times article refers to a “Holly-Tree Coffee-house Movement.” The name was a ..

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is a novel by Charles Dickens originally published as a serial from 1838 to 1839. It was Dickens' third novel. The story centres on the life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, a young man who must support his mother and sister after his father dies.Nich..

The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit is a novel by Charles Dickens, considered the last of his picaresque novels. It was originally serialised between 1842 and 1844. While he was writing it Dickens told a friend that he thought it was his best work, but it was one of his least popular novel..

Gordon Comstock has ‘declared war’ on what he sees as an ‘overarching dependence’ on money by leaving a promising job as a copywriter for an advertising company called ‘New Albion’—at which he shows great dexterity—and taking a low-paying job instead, ostensibly so he can write poetry. Coming from a..

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell’s personal account of his experiences and observations fighting in the Spanish Civil War for the POUM militia of the Republican army.Covering the period between December 1936 and June 1937, Orwell recounts Catalonia’s revolutionary fervor during his training in B..

Down and Out in Paris and London is the first full-length work by the English author George Orwell, published in 1933. It is a memoir in two parts on the theme of poverty in the two cities. Its target audience was the middle- and upper-class members of society—those who were more likely to be well e..

The themes of the book are nostalgia, the folly of trying to go back and recapture past glories and the easy way the dreams and aspirations of one’s youth can be smothered by the humdrum routine of work, marriage and getting old. It is written in the first person, with George Bowling, the forty-five..

Burmese Days is the first novel by English writer George Orwell, published in 1934. Set in British Burma during the waning days of empire, when Burma was ruled from Delhi as part of British India, the novel serves as “a portrait of the dark side of the British Raj.” At the centre of the novel is Joh..

1984 is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale.Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a democratic socialist, modelled the totalitarian government in the no..

Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage. The mismatched jumble of passengers provides Woolf with an opportunity to satirise Edwardian life. The novel introduces Clarissa Dalloway, the central char..

To the Lighthouse is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. The novel centres on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920.Following and extending the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, the plot of To the Lighthouse is seconda..

The Years is a 1937 novel by Virginia Woolf, the last she published in her lifetime. It traces the history of the Pargiter family from the 1880s to the “present day” of the mid-1930s.Although spanning fifty years, the novel is not epic in scope, focusing instead on the small private details of the c..