Ranking the Novels of Dickens

[Bick]

I'm currently reading Our Mutual Friend.
The pace is quite plodding to start with, however I am enjoying it without overdoing the reading. I read a couple of chapters then do or read something else. At over a 1000 pages you've got to take it easy.

Hate to be a pedant, but no Dickens books are over 1000 pages in standard modern printing. My Everyman edition of Our Mutual Friend (which is typical) is 822 pages. So, you don't have quite so much to read as you thought.

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

I have the Macmillan Collectors Library edition which comes in over 1000 pages.

 

[Bick]

I have the Macmillan Collectors Library edition which comes in over 1000 pages.

Oh, well, that's a pocket sized book with tiny pages - that's cheating
The same edition on kindle is only 622 pages...

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

At over a 1000 pages you've got to take it easy.

I know a lot of readers feel the same way about that as you do, but it has never been so for me. I find that no matter how short or long a book (or a series, if all the volumes in the series are already published when I pick up the first one) for me, total immersion and engagement is easiest if I read the whole thing straight through during whatever available reading time I happen to have at the time I acquire the book.

 

[Bick]

I know a lot of readers feel the same way about that as you do, but it has never been so for me. I find that no matter how short or long a book (or a series, if all the volumes in the series are already published when I pick up the first one) for me, total immersion and engagement is easiest if I read the whole thing straight through during whatever available reading time I happen to have at the time I acquire the book.

Yes, I’m the same, and I love a good long classic book.

 

[Extollager]

That reminds me of an anecdote Walter Hooper told about C. S. Lewis, that Lewis said something like: you can't get a cup of tea big enough or a good novel long enough to suit me -- and the book Lewis was reading at the moment was Bleak House.

 

[Bick]

We're nearing mid-year, and I haven't read this year's Dickens yet. Hmm, mustn't let the side down, I must pick one soon. Perhaps I should finally tackle Chuzzlewit, I know it's one of your favourites, Extollager. I have a peculiar itch to give Barnaby Rudge a go though, I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the late 18th century London setting. Does it have eccentric Dickensian characters?

 

[AE35Unit]

Maybe because its Dickens it feels like a thousand pages...

 

[Extollager]

Bick, I don’t remember any classic Dickensian eccentrics in Barnaby Rudge, though the title character was a “simpleton” with a (talking?) raven. I think maybe Dickens was trying his hand at a novel in the manner of Sir Walter Scott (who is not fashionable these days but is very good, I think, at his best). If your intention is to read all of the novels anyway, why not go with this one?

 

[Elentarri]

Bick, I don’t remember any classic Dickensian eccentrics in Barnaby Rudge, though the title character was a “simpleton” with a (talking?) raven.

Oh really?! That, at least, makes the book sound more interesting. I have Little Dorrit and Bleak House on my shelf - unread. I might have to re-read Tale of Two Cities one day, as well. First and second time I read it, I dissected it for school and that just kills a novel.

 

[Extollager]

Bick, your posting prompted a desire to pick up Barnaby Rudge for a rereading, but there are several other books clamoring for attention too. I have just started An Invisible Darkness, another novel and probable orphan work by Phyllis Paul.

Phyllis Paul: Twice Lost, Pulled Down, Invisible Darkness, A Little Treachery, more

It sounds to me like most, at least, of Paul's novels are "orphan works." Orphan work - Wikipedia I have tried to find out who (if anyone or anything) the copyright holders are, without success. There must still be people alive who knew the evidently reclusive Phyllis Paul. But so far as...

www.sffchronicles.com

It's 19 years since I read Barnaby for the first and only time....

The BBC has often turned to Dickens novels to adapt for TV, but it seems it's 62 years since they did this one.

Barnaby Rudge (TV series) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Bick]

Well, I had thought I would zig, and then I zagged. I’ve started neither Chuzzlewit, nor Barnard Rudge, but in fact The Pickwick Papers. Enjoying the start.

 

[AE35Unit]

Well, I had thought I would zig, and then I zagged. I’ve started neither Chuzzlewit, nor Barnard Rudge, but in fact The Pickwick Papers. Enjoying the start.

I downloaded Pickwick from Gutenberg. I would like to read his books chronologically

 

[Bick]

I downloaded Pickwick from Gutenberg. I would like to read his books chronologically

It’s a fine idea; the only potential argument against this approach is that you will read an awful lot of Dickens before you get to his finest books (Great Expectations, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, &c.). That said, it would a terrific way of seeing his development as a novelist.

 

[Extollager]

It’s a fine idea; the only potential argument against this approach is that you will read an awful lot of Dickens before you get to his finest books (Great Expectations, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, &c.). That said, it would a terrific way of seeing his development as a novelist.

Agreed. One more benefit of taking the chronological approach is that it tends to favor the books that -- so far as I am aware -- were the ones most loved by his early readers. The popular Dickens was the author of such books as Pickwick, Oliver Twist, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, and Martin Chuzzlewit, with David Copperfield (1849-1850) being the most late book of the series. These were the novels loaded with characters that people loved, referred to, perhaps even made mass-produced figures of, if my impression is correct. In these you get Sam Weller and the Fat Boy, Mr. Bumble and Sikes and Nancy and Fagin, little Nell and Dick Swiveller, Mrs. Gamp and Pecksniff, Peggotty and Mr. Dick and Murdstone, &c.

 

[Extollager]

However, it's the later and generally "darker" or more psychological novels that seem to be more in favor with university teachers and readers of literary fiction today, or (again) that's my impression.

FWIW, when I drew up my personal list, it favored the later novels. Within each list, the books are listed in chronological order, not order of my esteem. My idea was to make two lists of the same number of books (7 each), but not attempt to arrange the books in each list in order of my choice. (The asterisks are for books I've read more than once.)

Greater Seven:
The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841)*
Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844)
David Copperfield (1849-1850)*
Bleak House (1852-1853)*
A Tale of Two Cities (1859)*
Great Expectations (1860-1861)*
Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865)*

Lesser Seven:

Pickwick Papers (1836-1837)
Oliver Twist (1837-1839)*
Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839)
Barnaby Rudge (1841)
Dombey and Son (1846-1848)
Little Dorrit (1855-1857)*
Hard Times (1854)

Even as a statement of personal preference, that list isn't set in stone.


By the way, this is a nice blog entry:

ILLUSTRATING DICKENS

The Chris Beetles Gallery's annual The Illustrators exhibition is claimed to be the world's biggest single event for fans and collectors o...

briansibleysblog.blogspot.com

 

[Extollager]

Or again -- for the "popular" and relatively early Dickens -- Dolly Varden is a character in Barnaby Rudge, and there are a geranium, a woman's hat and a dress with a bustle, a dance, and a trout named for her. But I don't have the impression that the later novels contributed to popular culture this way.

 

[AE35Unit]

It’s a fine idea; the only potential argument against this approach is that you will read an awful lot of Dickens before you get to his finest books (Great Expectations, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, &c.). That said, it would a terrific way of seeing his development as a novelist.

So far I've read Oliver Twist (brilliant book), Old Curiosity Shop and a Christmas Carol. For me there's this reluctance to read books from that time, fearing that they'll be hard going, a slog. And Dickens is known for elaborating on what should be, ideally at least and for the sake of coherence and simple continuity, short and simple sentences.

 

[Extollager]

Back in the day, I was apprehensive about reading Dickens too. I believe that, when I took up my first unabridged novel by him, Oliver Twist, I thought I would mark paragraphs that I could skip if I read it again. ....I marked maybe two paragraphs -- ?

Dickens takes adjustment because we are used to novels with short paragraphs and enormous stretches of dialogue, if we read current popular fiction. That is, we're used to books influenced by the popular cinema. But I don't think Dickens is inherently hard to read. We just need to become receptive. Then we become like Nabokov, who begins his lecture on one of the Dickens novels by inviting us -- I don't remember his exact words -- to revel in Dickens, feast on Dickens. Dickens seems to me to be a really good writer of Dickens novels, and that includes his "rhetorical strategies," as it might have been put in the past half-dozen decades or so.

Now I find that it's the contemporary novel of 700 pages, mostly of dialogue, that I can't stick with. I can't read fast and casually enough to enjoy them.

 

[Bick]

I'm enjoying The Pickwick Papers a good deal. There's a definite underlying storyline of sorts, that links all the episodic tales, and Dickens' captures human character and foibles very well, which at such a young age is astounding. Mr Tingle was great, while he lasted (I don't know if we'll see him again, now he's taken the bribe to leave without the aunt spinster) and Sam Weller has just been introduced. I'm slowly going through it while I read other things, but it's eminently readable.