These are books by Charles Dickens, most of which first appeared in serial form in the year listed.

1836 - Sketches by Boz

• A variety of short descriptions of London scenes and characters
• Most useful for background and to supplement your character rather than choosing a character from these sketches

1836 - The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

• Loaded with wonderful and comic characters
• The early Victorian Cockney’s ideal of the successful common man who now has leisure time
• Good Cockney dialect – Sam Weller (Pickwick is a Cockney too but speaks better than Sam)

1838 - Oliver Twist

• Learning to be a criminal
• Daily life and customs of low class criminals: Fagin, Sykes, Nancy, etc.

1838 - Nicholas Nickleby

• Theatrical characters
• Daily middle class life
• Lots of young characters – boarding school life

1840- Sketches of Young Couples

1841 - Barnaby Rudge

• Rioters and apprentices

1841 - Old Curiosity Shop

• Daily lower middle class life
• Jarleys Waxworks

1843 - Martin Chuzzlewit

• Lots of Americans – wrong country: do not use them

1843 - A Christmas Carol (in The Christmas Books)

• A short book
• Fezziwig’s domestic ball
• Good Cockney dialect – the laundress and other who steal Scrooge’s deathbed curtains

1844 - The Chimes (in The Christmas Books)

• A short New Year’s story
• Poor but honest Cockneys and rich, evil bureaucrats

1845 - The Cricket on the Hearth (in The Christmas Books)

• A short Christmas story
• Wonderful lower middle class daily life
• Poor but honest Cockneys

1846 - Dombey and Son

• Upper middle class and merchant life – shipping and business

1846 - The Battle of Life (in The Christmas Books)

• A short Christmas story

1848 - The Haunted Man (in The Christmas Books)

• A short Christmas story

1849 - David Copperfield

• Home life of the Murdstones, upper middle class town people
• The boy, David, discovers London
• Home life of the Micawbers, lower middle class city people
• David’s courtship and marriage – a social diagnosis

1852 - Bleak House

• Law and justice in the London courts – Jo as a representative figure
• Mr. Tulkinghorn as a representative middle class Englishman
• The Dedlocks – an upper class old country family and their lifestyle

1859 - A Tale of Two Cities

• Revolutionary Frenchmen – wrong period: do not use them

1859 - Great Expectations

• The life of a London gentleman, such as Pip hoped to become
• The methods and problems of a criminal lawyer like Jaggers
• The Thames and its traffic

1870 - The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished)

• Because the book is incomplete, it may not be the best source

OTHER BOOKS & STORIES BY CHARLES DICKENS

Little Dorrit – The terrible, unfeeling, bureaucratic Circumlocution office

The Haunted House

Our Mutual Friend

Household Words

Hard Times

What Christmas Is

Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings

A Message from the Sea