AuthorCharles Dickens
NarratorMartin Jarvis
Duration2h 23m
CategoriesAdult Fiction, Classics
Key StageKS2
PublisherCSA Word
VersionAbridged
The timeless and enchanting festive story of Scrooge, who declares Christmas 'Humbug' and is taught otherwise. Ebenezer Scrooge is a money-grabbing skinflint who makes his own life and the lives of those around him nigh-unbearable with his mean and economical ways. One night just before Christmas, tucked up in his cold bed, he is shocked to meet apparitions of the embodiment of the festive season, who endeavour to teach him what the time of year is really about by taking him into the past, present and future. But there's no fool like an old fool...will scrooge learn his lesson and become more joyful and generous? This is truly a tale for all the family, which can be enjoyed at any time of year and is a perfect accompaniment to roasting marshmallows over an open fire and drinking big, hot mugs of cocoa.
Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Anton Lesser
Duration 19h 9m
Narrated in the first person, Great Expectations tells the story of Philip Pirrip (known as Pip) from his disadvantaged start as an orphan in the Kent marshes to the improvement in his position following an anonymous allowance. Pip moves to London where, only after many trials, does he learn humility and the value of loyalty. Key Dickens characters...
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Anton Lesser
Duration 22h 19m
Little Nell cares for her grandfather in the gloomy surroundings of his curiosity shop. Reduced to poverty, the pair are forced to flee London and Nell finds herself uprooted from a secure and innocent childhood and cast into a world where evil takes the form of characters such as Swiveller, Nubbles and the grotesque and lecherous Quilp.
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Anton Lesser
Duration 10h 41m
Hard Times is Dickens's most political novel. Set in the industrial north of England, in the fictional Coketown, he examines the lives of working people, who are taught by the capitalists Gradgrind and Bounderby to think only of the facts of life and not to indulge in imagination. Gradgrind's own children have been educated thus, and as a result ar...
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Nicholas Boulton
Duration 36h 10m
Recognised as one of the greatest works of English fiction, David Copperfield tells the story of a young man, from his painful childhood, through chance, tragedy and adventure, to self-knowledge and happiness. It includes some of Dickens's most vividly memorable characters. The cruelly saturnine Mr Murdstone; the redoubtable Betsey Trotwood; the ch...
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Anton Lesser
Duration 14h 41m
In one of the most famous openings of any novel, Dickens masterfully presents the turmoil of the French Revolution which is the backdrop for a novel of love, patience, hope and self-sacrifice. It is read by Anton Lesser whose award-winning Dickens recordings in their abridged form have now resulted in the opportunity to read the full unabridged tex...
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Sean Barrett, Teresa Gallagher
Duration 35h 15m
A complex plot of love and inheritance is set against the English legal system of the mid-nineteenth century, with all its tortuous avenues and disguised resolutions. Here is the firm, Jarndyce & Jarndyce, the young orphan and ward of court Ester Summerson (who tells much of the story). As always, it is the skilled pen of Dickens himself that c...
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Simon Vance
Duration 31h 21m
The most gorgeously theatrical of all Dickens's novels, Nicholas Nickleby follows the delightful adventures of a hearty young hero in nineteenth-century England. Nicholas, a gentleman's son fallen upon hard times, must set out to make his way in the world. His journey is accompanied by some of the most swaggering scoundrels and unforgettable eccent...
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Sean Barrett
Duration 33h 35m
The Chuzzlewits are a family divided by money and selfishness; even young Martin, the eponymous hero, is arrogant and self-centred. He offends his grandfather by falling in love with the latter's ward, Mary, and sets out to make his own fortune in life, travelling as far as America - which produces from Dickens a savage satire on a new world tainte...
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator Jonathan Keeble
Duration 16h 17m
A workhouse orphan, Oliver escapes by running away to London. He gets drawn into the treacherous underworld of pickpockets and thieves headed by Fagin. His companions are ultimately destined for gruesome ends. Will Oliver emerge unscathed from the darkness of the underworld?
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Author: Charles Dickens
Author Charles Dickens
Narrator David Timson
Duration 39h 6m
Mr. Dombey is a successful businessman who looks forward to the day when his young son Paul will be old enough to join the family business. But Dombey also has a loving daughter, Florence, whom he ignores, lavishing all his attention on his precious son. Set in the 1840s, against a background of Britain's emerging industrial power, the world of com...
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