The original CliffsNotes study guides offer a look into key elements and ideas within classic works of literature. The latest generation of titles in this series also features glossaries and visual elements that complement the familiar format.CliffsNotes on Great Expectations explores Charles Dickens's renowned work, a novel that gives you plots that twist and turn, themes of good and evil, and people who want for means to make sense of their lives.Following the story of an orphaned boy whose first-person take on the world around him gives readers a detailed picture of Victorian England, this ...
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The acclaimed author of Finn "digs down to the bones of a classic and creates must-read modern literature" (Charles Frazier, New York Times bestselling author) with this "clever riff" (The Washington Post) on Dickens's classic A Christmas Carol that explores of the relationship between Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley. "Marley was dead, to begin with," Charles Dickens tells us at the beginning of A Christmas Carol. But in Jon Clinch's "masterly" (The New York Times Book Review) novel, Jacob Marley, business partner to Ebenezer Scrooge, is very much alive: a rapacious and cunning boy who grows...
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In October 1843, Charles Dickens ― heavily in debt and obligated to his publisher ― began work on a book to help supplement his family's meager income. That volume, A Christmas Carol, has long since become one of the most beloved stories in the English language. As much a part of the holiday season as holly, mistletoe, and evergreen wreaths, this perennial favorite continues to delight new readers and rekindle thoughts of charity and goodwill.With its characters exhibiting many qualities ― as well as failures ― often ascribed to Dickens himself, the imaginative and ente...
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In October 1843, Charles Dickens ― heavily in debt and obligated to his publisher ― began work on a book to help supplement his family's meager income. That volume, A Christmas Carol, has long since become one of the most beloved stories in the English language. As much a part of the holiday season as holly, mistletoe, and evergreen wreaths, this perennial favorite continues to delight new readers and rekindle thoughts of charity and goodwill.With its characters exhibiting many qualities ― as well as failures ― often ascribed to Dickens himself, the imaginative and ente...
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HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...'

Set before and during the French Revolution in the cities of Paris and London, A Tale of Two Cities tells the story of Dr Manette's release from imprisonment in the Bastille and his reunion with daughter, Lucie. A French aristocrat Darnay and English lawyer Carton compete in their love for Lucie and the ensuing tale plays out against the menacing backdrop of the French Revolution and the shadow of the guillotine.

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The grim tale of the people who were caught up in the wave of violence and murder which marked the French Revolution.
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The French Revolution comes to vivid life in Charles Dickens's famous novel about the best of times and the worst of times... The storming of the Bastille...the death carts with their doomed human cargo...the swift drop of the guillotine blade--this is the French Revolution that Charles Dickens vividly captures in his famous work A Tale of Two Cities. With dramatic eloquence, he brings to life a time of terror and treason, a starving people rising in frenzy and hate to overthrow a corrupt and decadent regime. With insight and compassion, Dickens casts his novel of unforgettable scenes with som...
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Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz) and George Cattermole, with a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. This vivid historical and political novel by Dickens is centred on the infamous 'No Popery' riots, instigated by Lord George Gordon, which terrorised London in 1780. Dickens' targets are prejudice, intolerance, religious bigotry and nationalistic fervour, together with the villains who exploit these for selfish ends. His intense account of the riots is interwoven with the mysterious tale of a long-unsolved murder and with a romance involv...
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Widely regarded as Dickens's masterpiece, Bleak House centers on the generations-long lawsuit Jarndyce and Jarndyce, through which "whole families have inherited legendary hatreds." Focusing on Esther Summerson, a ward of John Jarndyce, the novel traces Esther's romantic coming-of-age and, in classic Dickensian style, the gradual revelation of long-buried secrets, all set against the foggy backdrop of the Court of Chancery. Mixing romance, mystery, comedy, and satire, Bleak House limns the suffering caused by the intricate inefficiency of the law.
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Penguin presents the companion book to the Masterpiece Theatre miniseries starring Gillian Anderson (The House of Mirth, The X-Files). This stunning production features a screenplay written by Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones s Diary). Part romance, part melodrama, part detective story, the novel spreads out among a web of relationships in every level of society from the simple-minded Sir Leicester Dedlock, to Jo the street sweeper.Bleak House opens in the twilight of foggy London, where fog grips the city most densely in the Court of Chancery. The obscure case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, in which a...
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Penguin presents the companion book to the Masterpiece Theatre miniseries starring Gillian Anderson (The House of Mirth, The X-Files). This stunning production features a screenplay written by Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones s Diary). Part romance, part melodrama, part detective story, the novel spreads out among a web of relationships in every level of society from the simple-minded Sir Leicester Dedlock, to Jo the street sweeper.Bleak House opens in the twilight of foggy London, where fog grips the city most densely in the Court of Chancery. The obscure case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, in which a...
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Considered one of Dickens's greatest works, Bleak House scathingly portrays his belief: The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself. Peopled with both comic and tragic characters, including one of literature's first detectives, this classic celebrates the 150th anniversary of its first publication. Original.
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The quintessential novel from England's most beloved novelist, David Copperfield is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful author.
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Introduction and Notes by Dr Adrienne Gavin, Canterbury Christ Church University College. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz). Dickens wrote of David Copperfield 'Of all my books I like this the best'. Millions of readers in almost every language on earth have subsequently come to share the author's own enthusiasm for this greatly loved classic, possibly because of its autobiographical form. Following the life of David through many sufferings and great adversity, the reader will also find many light-hearted moments in the company of a host of English fiction's greatest stars including Mr ...
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Considered by many to be Dickens' finest novel, Great Expectations traces the growth of the book's narrator, Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man with depth of character. From its famous dramatic opening on the bleak Kentish marshes, the story abounds with some of Dickens' most memorable characters. Among them are the kindly blacksmith Joe Gargery, the mysterious convict Abel Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Haversham and her beautiful ward Estella, Pip's good-hearted room-mate Herbert Pocket and the pompous Pumblechook. As Pip unravels the truth behind his own 'great expecta...
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