A Christmas Carol has had an enduring influence on the way we think about the traditions of Christmas ever since it was first published in December 1843. Dickens' story of solitary miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who is taught the true meaning of Christmas by the three ghosts of Christmas past, present and [...]

Ebenezer Scrooge is a mean old man with no friends or family to love him - he's just so miserable and bitter! One freezing cold Christmas Eve, Marley's Ghost pays Scrooge a visit and an eerie night-time journey begins. The Christmas spirits are here to show Scrooge the error if his nasty ways. By vi[...]

If you love a good story, then look no further. Oxford Children's Classics bring together the most unforgettable stories ever told. They're books to treasure and return to again and again. When Oliver Twist asks for more food it changes his life for ever. He flees his dreary life in the workhouse[...]

Christmas is humbug, Scrooge says - just a time when you find yourself a year older and not a penny richer. The only thing that matters to Scrooge is business, and making money. But on Christmas Eve three spirits come to visit him. They take him travelling on the wings of the night to see the shadow[...]

In a gloomy, neglected house Miss Havisham sits, as she has sat year after year, in a wedding dress and veil that were once white, and are now faded and yellow with age. Her face is like a death's head; her dark eyes burn with bitterness and hate. By her side sits a proud and beautiful girl, and in [...]

Charles Dickens is credited with creating some of the world's best-known fictional characters, and is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian age. Even before reading the works of Dickens many people have met him already in some form or another. His characters have such vitality th[...]

Charles Dickens is credited with creating some of the world's best-known fictional characters, and is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian age. Even before reading the works of Dickens many people have met him already in some form or another. His characters have such vitality th[...]

These children's classics have been sensitively adapted to enrich your junior pupils' reading. They are part of a structured reading programme for juniors from Oxford Reading Tree, Stages 9-16. They have masses of boy and girl appeal and will introduce your readers to significant authors from the [...]

Charles Dickens had three professional careers: novelist, journalist and public Reader. That third career has seldom been given the serious attention it deserved. For the last 12 years of his life he toured Britain and America giving 2-hour readings from his work to audiences of over two thousand. T[...]

In 1836 the 23-year-old Dickens was invited by his publishers to write a monthly something' illustrated by sporting plates. Thus the Pickwick Club was born: its supposed papers' soom outgrew their origins and became a brilliantly comic novel, still among Dicken's most popular works.[...]

The new Oxford World's Classics edition of Oliver Twist is based on the authoritative Clarendon edition, which uses Dickens's revised text of 1846. It includes his preface of 1841 in which he defended himself against hostile criticism, and includes all 24 original illustrations by George Cruikshank[...]