His own libretto to the operas, translated by Andrew Porter, is an intricate system of metric patterns, imaginative metaphors and alliteration,combining to produce the music in text.'Andrew Porter's utterly natural, often poetic, faithfully rendered English text should be a revelation...The immediacy of instant comprehension gives the entire drama an added dimension.'--The New York Times

    The obscure case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, in which an inheritance is gradually devoured by legal costs, the romance of Esther Summerson and the secrets of her origin, the sleuthing of Detective Inspector Bucket and the fate of Jo the crossing-sweeper, these are some of the lives Dickens invokes to portray London society, rich and poor, as no other novelist has done. Bleak House, in its atmosphere, symbolism and magnificent bleak comedy, is often regarded as the best of Dickens. A 'great Victorian novel', it is so inventive in its competing plots and styles that it eludes interpretation.

    There are the usual inline tables of contents and links after each text/chapter to get back to the respective tables. The dates of first publication are noted.-------------Typee: A Romance of the South Seas. (1846)Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas. (1847)Mardi: and A Voyage Thither. (1849)Redburn: His First Voyage. (1849)White-Jacket: or, The World in a Man-of-War. (1850)Moby-Dick: or, The Whale. (1851)Pierre: or, The Ambiguities. (1852)Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile. (1855)The Piazza Tales (1856): The Piazza, Bartleby, Benito Cereno, The Lightning-Rod Man, The Encantadas; or, Enchanted Isles, The Bell-TowerThe Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. (1857)Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War. (1866)Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. (1876)John Marr and Other Sailors with Some Sea Pieces. (1888)Timoleon and Other Ventures in Verse. (1891)The Apple-Tree Table, and Other Sketches (1922): The Apple-Tree Table, Jimmy Rose, I and my Chimney, The Paradise of Bachelors and The Tartarus of Maids, Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!, The Fiddler, Poor Man’s Pudding and Rich Man’s Crumbs, The Happy Failure, The ’Gees.Billy Budd, and Other Prose Pieces (1924): Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative), The Two Temples, Daniel Orme.Weeds and Wildings, With a Rose or Two. (1924)Essays: Fragments from a Writing Desk No. 1 & 2, Etchings of a Whaling Cruise, Authentic Anecdotes of “Old Zack,” Mr Parkman’s Tour, Cooper’s New Novel, A Thought on Book-Binding, Hawthorne and His Mosses.Uncollected Poems: Marquis de Grandvin at the Hostelry, Naples in the Time of Bomba, Immolated, Madam Mirror, The Wise Virgins to Madam Mirror, The New Ancient of Days, The Rusty Man, Thy Aim, Thy Aim?, The Old Shipmaster and his Crazy Barn, Camoens, Camoens in the Hospital, Montaigne and his Kitten, Falstaffs Lament over Prince Hal, Shadow at the Feast, Merry Ditty of the Sad Man, Honor, Fruit and Flower Painter, The Medallion, Time’s Long Ago!, In the Hall of Marbles, Gold in the Mountain, In Shards the Sylvan Vases Lie, In the Jovial Age of Old, A Spirit Appeared to Me, Give Me the Nerve, My Jacket Old, In the Old Farm-House, To ——, A Battle Picture, Old Age in his Ailing, Hearts-of-Gold, Pontoosuce, Epistle to Daniel Shepherd, Inscription for the Slain at Fredericksburgh, The Admiral of the White, To Tom, Suggested by the Ruins of a Mountain-Temple in Arcadia, Puzzlement, The Continents, The Dust-Layers, A Rail Road Cutting near Alexandria in 1855, A Reasonable Constitution, Rammon, Ditty of Aristippus, In A Nutshell, Adieu.

    Grimwig. "Don't you?" asked Mr. Brownlow, smiling. The spirit of contradiction was strong in Mr. Grimwig's breast, at the moment; and it was rendered stronger by his friend's confident smile. "No," he said, smiting the table with his fist, "I do not. The boy has a new suit of clothes on his back, a set of valuable books under his arm, and a five-pound note in his pocket. He'll join his old friends the thieves, and laugh at you. If ever that boy returns to this house, sir, I'll eat my head." -from Chapter XIV In February 1837, the new British magazine Bentley's Miscellany published the first installment in a serial story written by its editor. Its star was a good-hearted orphan boy; its author was Charles Dickens; and by the time it concluded in March 1839, Oliver Twist would become one of the most beloved of Dickens' novels. First published in book form in 1838, it has never been out of print, and little wonder: it is the classic rags-to-riches story, and a foundation of modern popular fiction that is required and highly enjoyable reading for all lovers of literature. Also in this volume: Dickens' A Child's History of England, a charming survey of the story of the Sceptred Isle from the time of the Romans through the 1830s. Simply written but wide-ranging, it's a delightful read for Dickens devotees. British author CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) remains one of the most popular writers in the world. A spinner of stories of satire and social criticism-including Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, and the work considered his greatest, David Copperfield-his writings have entertainedgenerations of readers and influenced generations of writers.