Author(s): Charles Dickens

Classics

Charles John Huffam Dickens ( 7 February 1812 Landport near Portsmouth -- 9 June 1870 Higham , Kent ) was one of the most important English writers of the Victorian era and the first literary chronicler of the metropolis in the midst of the Industrial Revolution . He remained England's most popular writer until after the First World War . He became famous with The Pickwick Papers (The posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club), which appeared monthly from 1836. Then Oliver Twist appeared in the magazine he edited Bentley's Miscellany in 1837-1838, Nicholas Nickleby in 1838-1839, The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge , both in 1841.

Excerpt...

That punctual servant of all work, the sun, had just risen, and begun to strike a light on the morning of the thirteenth of May, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven, when Mr. Samuel Pickwick burst like another sun from his slumbers, threw open his chamber window, and looked out upon the world beneath. Goswell Street was at his feet, Goswell Street was on his right hand--as far as the eye could reach, Goswell Street extended on his left; and the opposite side of Goswell Street was over the way. 'Such,' thought Mr. Pickwick, 'are the narrow views of those philosophers who, content with examining the things that lie before them, look not to the truths which are hidden beyond.