Charles Dickens: 200 years
In addition to all of the magical novels written by Charles Dickens, the titles below reflect books where he or his characters were inspiration for a new tale, along with a few excellent books about his life and writings.
Fiction
Barnaby Rudge : a tale of the riots of ‘eighty / by Charles Dickens
The chaos of the “No Popery” or Gordon Riots of 1780, with Lord George Gordon as a major figure.
Charles Dickens’ best stories/ edited and with an introduction by Morton Dauwen Zabel
Girl in a blue dress: a novel inspired by the life and marriage of Charles Dickens/Arnold, Gaynor
Recently widowed Dorothea Gibson examines her difficult life with a late, beloved, celebrity author during Queen Victoria’s reign in this novel based on the real-life troubled marriage of Charles Dickens.
Drood/ Simmons, Dan
Drood…is the name and nightmare that obsesses Charles Dickens for the last five years of his life. On June 9, 1865, Dickens and his mistress are secretly returning to London, when their express train hurtles over a gap in a trestle. All of the first-class carriages except the one carrying Dickens are smashed to bits in the valley below. When Dickens descends into the valley to confront the dead and dying, his life will change forever. And at the core of that ensuing five year nightmare is…Drood.
The last Dickens : a novel/ Pearl, Matthew
Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens’ untimely death reaches the offices of his struggling American publisher, Fields & Osgood, partner James Osgood sends his trusted clerk Daniel Sand to await the arrival of Dickens’ unfinished novel. But when Daniel’s body is discovered by the docks and the manuscript is nowhere to be found, Osgood must embark on a transatlantic quest to unearth the novel that he hopes will save his venerable business and reveal Daniel’s killer.
Mister Pip / Lloyd Jones
On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, on which survival is a daily struggle, eccentric Mr. Watts, the only white man left after the other teachers flee, spends his day reading to the local children from Charles Dickens’s classic “Great Expectations.”.
Death by Dickens / edited by Anne Perry
An anthology of original mystery stories celebrates the work of Charles Dickens by bringing in some of his most famous characters, with contributions by Bill Crider, Carole Nelson Douglas, Peter Tremayne, and Anne Perry.
Mad as the Dickens: a Laura Fleming mystery / Toni L.P. Kelner
When her cousin implores her husband Richard to direct a production of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, Laura Fleming accompanies Richard to her hometown in North Carolina, where she becomes embroiled in murder and mayhem when the man who was cast as Scrooge is viciously slain.
Non-Fiction
Charles Dicken : a life / Claire Tomalin
A biography of Charles Dickens, examining his difficult youth, his rise to hero status as an author, and virtues and vices as a writer and a human being.
Charles Dickens/ Smiley, Jane
Offers a profile of Dickens’s life, interpretations of his major works, and a study of his narrative techniques, themes, characters, and style.
What Jane Austen ate and Charles Dickens knew: from fox hunting to whist : the facts of daily life in nineteenth-century England / Daniel Pool
Essays provide a view of British life during the nineteenth century.
Becoming Dickens: the invention of a novelist / Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
Looks at Charles Dickens’ early life before, and as, he established himself as a novelist, explaining how he was uncertain as to which career path to follow and describing the many struggles he had early on.
