Classic Gutenberg

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...

"Charles Dickens" here means editor as well as author. This is the fifth Christmas number, from 1854, of his journal Household Words. Dickens himself tops and tails the festive story cycle, set after an archetypal Christmas Eve dinner ("I never saw a finer turkey, finer beef") in a Rochester almshouse. The "travellers" are voiced in their narrations by Wilkie Collins (who contributes a...

Tom Tidler's Ground, also known as Tom Tiddler's Ground or Tommy Tiddler's Ground, is an ancient children's game in which one player, "Tom Tidler," stands on a heap of stones, gravel, etc.; other players rush onto the heap, crying "Here I am on Tom Tidler's ground," while Tom tries to capture the invaders or keep them off. By extension, the phrase has come to mean the ground or tenement of a...

The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet: A Sermon in Crude Melodrama is a one-act play by George Bernard Shaw, first produced in in 1909. Shaw describes the play as a religious tract in dramatic form. In 1909 Shaw jousted with governmental censorship, as personified by The Examiner Of Plays, an agency acting under the auspices of the Lord Chamberlain. The outcome, unsatisfactory to Shaw, is reviewed...

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...

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...

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...

Two collections of rarely published early sketches by Dickens, one about Young Gentleman (including items like The Bashful Young Gentleman, The Military Young Gentleman and The Theatrical Young Gentleman) and one about (mostly) young couples (including items like The Young Couple, The Loving Couple and The Old Couple). The sketches are short with occasional illustrations and combine humor,...

Hugo's Napoleon the Little is a satirical comparison of Napoleon I and II, published in 1852. Earlier was monument of leadership, while latter a complete failure. During his reign, France went to an edge of ruin. This conscience-shaking work with references from other sources is illuminating for readers of all times!

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 October 1845 and finished it by 1 December. Like all of Dickens's Christmas books, it was published in...