Classic Gutenberg

The Wreck of the Golden Mary is the work of many hands but was originally started by Dickens. The story portrays an amazing voyage around Cape Horn, then north to the coast of California. The tale takes a stunning turn when the ship strikes an iceberg and passengers and crew languish in lifeboats. Dickens’s subtlety of style and picturesque depiction keeps reader rapt till the very...

The story traces the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. David was born in Blunderstone, Suffolk, near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, in 1820, six months after the death of his father. David spends his early years with his mother and their housekeeper, Peggotty. When he is seven years old his mother marries Edward Murdstone. David is given good reason to dislike his...

Why, ma, yes you do. They're so fine and handsome, and high-bred and polite, so every way superior to our gawks here in this village; why, they'll make life different from what it was-so humdrum and commonplace, you know-oh, you may be sure they're full of accomplishments, and knowledge of the world, and all that, that will be an immense advantage to society here. Don't you think so, ma?

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (also known as The Pickwick Papers) is Charles Dickens's first novel. He was asked to contribute to the project as an up-and-coming writer following the success of Sketches by Boz, published in 1836 (most of Dickens' novels were issued in shilling installments before being published as complete volumes). Dickens (still writing under the pseudonym of Boz)...

While the three ghosts that visited Ebenezer Scrooge was Charles Dickens' most famous apparitions, his interest in the supernatural did not end there. Three Ghost Stories is just that: 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,...

The book content includes: The village coquettes (1836) The lamplighter (1838) The Pickwick papers (1837) The examiner (1841) The Patrician’s daughter (1842) The keepsake (1844) The daily news (1846) Lines addressed to Mark Lemon (1849) The lighthouse (1855) The frozen deep (1856) The wreck of Golden Mary (1856)

To Be Read at Dusk is a short, traditional ghost story by Charles Dickens.

The Prince and the Pauper is a novel by American author Mark Twain. It was first published in 1881 in Canada, before its 1882 publication in the United States. The novel represents Twain's first attempt at historical fiction. Set in 1547, it tells the story of two young boys who are identical in appearance: Tom Canty, a pauper who lives with his abusive father in Offal Court off Pudding Lanein...

Tom Sawyer, Detective is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain. It is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and a prequel to Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894). Tom Sawyer attempts to solve a mysterious murder in thisburlesque of the immensely popular detective novels of the time. Like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the story is told using the first-person narrative...

The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices was co-written by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins and features two characters (Mr. Goodchild and Mr. Idle) that are stand-ins for these two. It is told over the course of what was originally five issues of Dickens' journal Household Words and depicts an "idle" (but actually quite frantic) vacation, with long walks/hikes and explorations of inns and other...

In some collection of old English Ballads there is an ancient ditty which I am told bears some remote and distant resemblance to the following Epic Poem. I beg to quote the emphatic language of my estimable friend (if he will allow me to call him so), the Black Bear in Piccadilly, and to assure all to whom these presents may come, that "I am the original." This affecting legend is given in the...

The Man is a romance novel by Bram Stoker (the author of Dracula), written in 1905. The Man has also been published under the name The Gates of Life. The novel begins with a "Fore-glimpse" or preface, where the two main characters Miss Stephen Norman and Harold An Wolf are sitting in the graveyard of their town's church, eavesdropping on the conversation of two little girls below them, Marjorie...

King Richard the Second is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England (ruled 1377–1399) and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's successors: Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; and Henry V. It may not...

The American Claimant is an 1892 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. Twain wrote the novel with the help ofphonographic dictation, the first author (according to Twain himself) to do so. This was also (according to Twain) an attempt to write a book without mention of the weather, the first of its kind in fictitious literature. Indeed, all the weather is contained in an appendix, at...

The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, A Fancy for Christmas-Time (better known as The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain or simply as The Haunted Man) is a novella by Charles Dickens first published in 1848. It is the fifth and last of Dickens's Christmas novellas. The story is more about the spirit of the holidays than about the holidays themselves, harking back to the first in the series, A...

Mrs. Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893, and first performed in London in 1902. The title refers to prostitution. The story centres on the relationship between Mrs Kitty Warren and her daughter, Vivie. Mrs. Warren, a former prostitute and current brothel owner, is described as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman." Vivie, an...

Sketches New and Old is a group of fictional stories by Mark Twain. It was published in 1875. It includes the short story "A Ghost Story", among others. Preface My Watch Political Economy The Jumping Frog Journalism in Tennessee The Story of the Bad Little Boy The Story of the Good Little Boy A Couple of Poems by Twain and Moore Niagara Answers to Correspondents To Raise...

The Mudfog Papers was written by Victorian era novelist Charles Dickens and published from 1837–38 in the monthly literary serial Bentley's Miscellany, which he then edited. They were first published as a book as The Mudfog Papers and Other Sketches. The Mudfog Papers relates the proceedings of the fictional “The Mudfog Society for the Advancement of Everything”, a Pickwickian...

This is a collection of short "stories", describing different types of young couples. As always, Dickens' scatterings of humour help make it an enjoyable read. It's mainly an exercise in characterisation, but each little chapter reads like a story, or part of a story. This book would be a useful tool to someone wanting to learn how to write. It may have been written quite some time ago, but human...

Mugby Junction is a set of short stories written in 1866 by Charles Dickens and collaborators Charles Collins, Amelia B. Edwards, Andrew Halliday, and Hesba Stretton. It was first published in a Christmas edition of the magazine All the Year Round. Dickens penned a majority of the issue, including the frame narrative in which "the Gentleman for Nowhere," who has spent his life cloistered in the...