Where To Start With Charles Dickens with Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
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- Опубликовано: 2 июн 2024
- Professor and author Robert Douglas-Fairhurst leads us on a journey through the perfect introduction to Charles Dickens, detailing which books you should read in what order from Dickens' pantheon of classic novels. You can order Robert's new book The Turning Point here: amzn.to/3IX3m1m
From the award-winning author of Becoming Dickens and The Story of Alice comes a major new biography of Charles Dickens, tracing the year that would transform his life and times.
The year is 1851. It's a time of radical change in Britain, when industrial miracles and artistic innovations rub shoulders with political unrest, poverty and disease. It's also a turbulent time in the private life of Charles Dickens, as he copes with a double bereavement and early signs that his marriage is falling apart. But this formative year will become perhaps the greatest turning point in Dickens's career, as he embraces his calling as a chronicler of ordinary people's lives, and develops a new form of writing that will reveal just how interconnected the world is becoming.
The Turning Point transports us into the foggy streets of Dickens's London, closely following the twists and turns of a year that would come to define him, and forever alter Britain's relationship with the world. Fully illustrated, and brimming with fascinating details about the larger-than-life man who wrote Bleak House, this is the closest look yet at one of the greatest literary personalities ever to have lived.
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“Where to Start with…” should be a series. Please, sir, I’d like some more.
So true!
Really, love from India
I thought it was ;-;; I really hope they consider making it a series
💯
Yes yes yes!
1:19 A Christmas Carol
3:20 Great Expectations
5:16 A Tale of Two Cities
7:25 Bleak House
9:45 The Pickwick Papers
David Copperfield is his best work
Thank you!
A christmas Carol is his best work.
The Curiosity Shop was really good 😊
As a student of English literature, it was incredibly satisfying to hear someone talk about Dickens so passionately. Dickens is undoubtedly one of the greatest prose writers ever.
I am absolutely gobsmacked when I think about the speed he wrote. The writers I know get twisted and blocked, Dickens was a glorious fountain….
no matter what everyone says he is the greatest novelist of all time.
Is this a series? If not, it def should be! I just loved the format! Next ones could be Woolf and Shakespeare 🤩🤩🤩
I second this
100%
Where to Start: Balzac
Where to Start: Mishima
Where to Start: Toni Morrison
Yes! Do one on Yeats next!
100% agree
I'm very old. When I was at school we had to read Dickens. We tackled Great Expectations when we were aged 12-13, and David Copperfield the next year. I don't think young scholars today would have the staying power, but we loved it. As I grew up in the city where Dickens was born, we took him as a local hero.
I have to put in a good word for David Copperfield. It’s my favorite Dickens book because the characters are so fun.
Reading it now, it’s incredible! Definitely think should be on this list.
Agreed. Plus, as a kid, I thought much about Steerforth (the pampered villain who, in a single, reflective moment, wished he'd had the guidance of a father). I pitied him.
Janet! Donkeys!!
I loved the the character miss mowcher!
I agree to that!
I agree that A Christmas Carol is a great place to start. Oliver Twist was the first Dickens I read, and I think it's a good introduction to Dickens.
I started with Oliver Twist as well. Don't regret it at all.
I’m reading Oliver Twist now.
About 55+ years ago I started out with Oliver Twist as well. Then Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, and now Bleak House. While there are many interesting characters, I find his books too wordy, too lengthy, and I often lose the plot because of all the intricacies and sub plots. Still, I recognize that Dickens was making some highly serious and illuminating disclosures of problems in his society. Obviously his was a life long quest for justice.
Same with Oliver I think because it was on every Christmas for years. I feel like I am in Victorian London or wherever the story is.
Nicholas Nickleby is sooooo funny and adventurous with awesome characters, and a beautifully satisfying ending!!! So worth the read
Its always amazed me how he crammed so much into his life…author, journalist, performer, editor etc etc etc
J'aime votre enthousiasme. Vous avez raison, pour moi aussi, Dickens a changé ma façon de voir le monde. J'aime beaucoup d'écrivains mais Dickens a une place à part dans mon coeur. Je l'aime depuis l'enfance, depuis que mon père m'a transmis sa passion pour son univers. J'aime tout Dickens, même si ma préférence va à David Copperfield et Great Expectations, sans oublier le merveilleux Mister Pickwick.
I have been a lover of Dickens for many years. Thank you, Prof. Douglas-Fairhurst!
Growing up a working class kid in the 1960’s Brooklyn of stickball, kick the can, parochial school nuns (God bless them they socialized a generation of ruffians that nowadays are lost to the streets), etc. I could lose myself and my occasionally challenging circumstances with a book. I made my way eventually to Dickens and vividly recall a sense of kinship. (And challenge, I love having to read a passage a couple of times to “get it.”) More important, as with Shakespeare, I could read a passage and would recognize a thought, a feeling, a concept I had in my mind but never thought to put into words. It was at the same time both a discovery and a recognition. Amazing feeling. Great poetry can do that, but so too could Dickens or Shakespeare.
I never lost my love for reading. By the time I finished college I had read everything that Melville, Hemingway, and Dickens ever wrote even though I never took a literature course. (I was a “STEM” major and should have been spending more time with that, but that’s another story.) Melville and Hemingway have faded in my estimation, but Dickens never and I still go back to reread his works. In fact, it seems to me that rereading is the wrong word, the great novels are always new to the older rereader.
Thanks again, professor.
Ps. I just ordered your book, Professor, and look forward to its delivery when published in America in March.
I finished Bleak House in 2019 having read all of his shorter books with the exception of The Mystery of Edwin Drood and some travelogues. It was not nearly as easy a read and a bit long-winded at times but the payoff was so transformative that I’m now on a journey to reading all of his books.
Bleak House has been the toughest one for me to get through. I'll tackle it again now that I'm retired and can focus some solid time daily reading it (as opposed to trying to read a chapter or two a few nights a week).
I have listened to The Curiosity Shop by Audiobooks and though long, enjoyed it immensely.
What I love about his books is how the characters are very human. Even the villains have a history that has developed their character and there are reasons for who they are.
I need more of these Where To Start videos! An eloquent author giving wonderful summaries while featuring the beautiful cover art of the Penguin collection ❤️
My interest in Dickens smoldered with A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, and A tale of two cities but it only really caught fire with Bleak House. Such wonderful prose and what a rollercoaster ending.
How did Google know that I've been reading Great Expectations lately even though I didn't mention anything about it in anywhere of these platforms to recommand this to me is.. beyond me.
I'm subscribing though.
Can you make this a permanent series! This is so awesome and a great introduction to the classics! I’ll love to see Austen, Brontë Sisters, Steinbeck, and Hemingway
Thomas Hardy
I love Dicken's novels, and 'Our Mutual Friend' is definitely my favorite.
Good selection! I am currently reading/listening to this great novel and I am enjoying it a great deal. Who knew you could make a fortune in collecting dust?!? Regards...
@@mikesnyder1788 Ha! Who knew, right? The BBC did a pretty decent four-part series of 'Our Mutual Friend' back in the late '90s, if you're ever interested in seeing it dramatized (Timothy Spall as 'Mr. Venus' is an absolute hoot). Take care. :)
I love that book as well, the river is actually a character in that novel…
@@lisarozzz Yes! Absolutely. The river serves as metaphor and character in the book. Like the book's many human characters, the river can be benign and lovely, or dark and threatening, or leaning to the shore of either at various bends. And it literally 'flows' through the story. I really think it's Dickens' most mature work, and I just simply love the story for itself. :) (I liked the miniseries shown on PBS in 1998(?). That last scene on the river was perfect.)
This should be a series.
Here’s sending a prayer out to the universe hoping this is the beginning of a series.
I never knew where to start with classic authors like Dickens, so thanks for sharing!
Professor Douglas-Fairhurst is articulate and has interesting things to say. I was a bit surprised he didn’t include David Copperfield on his list, but I suppose that’s personal opinion. What bothered me about the video was the use of the trendy camera angle (with the speaker apparently staring vacantly off into space while speaking.) It makes the speaker seem sort of shifty, as if he is incapable of sustaining “eye contact” with his viewers. It’s a cheap gimmick, and one would think viewers could patiently watch a professor speak for twelve minutes without needing a constantly changing camera angle.
Oliver Twist was where I started 🖤
Having read long ago many of the Dickens' novels, this video inspires me to once again take up Dickens. Tale of Two Cities (abridged version) was, by the way, the first English novel - English is not my mother tongue - I read in the last year of my school, as a prescribed 'text book'. The year was 1966-67. The place, a remote town in Maharashtra, India.
I love the way that the books have been turned into films and TV series and they work really well because of the lively colorful characters.
What a wonderful initiative! Please continue this as a series.
We need this as a series.
Good recommendations on one of the greatest novelists of all time. I have most of Dickens' books, with A Tale of Two Cities being my favorite, so far!
Agreed. I remember when I first read Mme. Defarge's backstory, I had worlds of pity. That book contained the most striking images of social class conflict I've ever encountered.
Great video. Thanks for posting 😊
We need more of these excellent introductions to Great Writers!
Great Expectations is not short: it's a 160,000+ words! That is NOT a short novel. It's a beast.
It’s actually one of his shortest novels. Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Dombey and Son are all 350k+!
@@DanielFletcherFlute Indeed might be one HIS shortest novels, but 160,000 words is not a short novel generally 😄
Bleak House cannot be beaten by anyone, anywhere. Simply untouchable.
I agree fantastic book…
I think Pickwick may, with its episodic structure and joyous energy, be a better introduction to Dickens for a modern reader than the others. Modern readers, alas, too often find Dickens prose (and others of the era) something of an acquired taste, or at least something that requires a bit of practice. Pickwick may thus be useful as a more gentle introduction. And, too, these readers may have the pleasure of recognizing a possible influence on a well-loved character of a later age, in a faithful servant named Sam…
absolutely, mate. then Bleak House, then Little Dorrit, then Our Mutual Friend and Great Ex. then on to effing Eliot.
IMHO if you're starting with The Pickwick Papers, you need to be warned that it doesn't really get good until about 100 pages in, when Sam Weller shows up.
Pickwick Papers was a total surprise for me and I absolutely love this book! Yes, the episodic structure would work well for someone just getting into Dickens! Also, the old Recorded Books audio version was totally well done!
Great talk. Engaging but not condescending. Just wondered why Oliver Twist did not get into the early sequence of recommended reading. I would put it between Christmas Carol and Great Expectations. But it is long and the final third can be hard-going.
This is the exact video I was looking for thank you for the tips! I’ve read A Christmas Carol and will be following your reading order.
Thanks for this! Excellently explained, and immediately makes me want to read these books.
A Christmas Carol is the best book i've ever read and I read it every Christmas. Thanks for the video
This was wonderful! I have just started reading Dickens! Please more of these videos with this gentleman!
Thoroughly enjoyed this video, fantastic introduction to Dickens and the way Robert described the models was so calming and interesting to watch. I bet he's a fantastic teacher and I am now going to look out for his book too!
This should be made into a series 😍
Delightful video! As others commented, I would love to see this made into a series!
Haven't read any of his books but I am going to do it now! This is super helpful and I'm definitely really interested to read all of these
Thanks for this video. I read A Christmas Carol and loved it and would like to read more by Dickens. I’ll follow your order, love your inspiration for Dickens.
Thankyou so very much for this perfect presentation.
He's my favourite writer, Sir!
Thanks for this instructive lecture. I have read much of Dickens'. He remains my all-time favorite author.
Thank you, my first Dickens was Great Expectations, which I loved! Just finished Dombey & Son, excellent! I've just also read A Christmas Carol. Just started Hard Times. And the next two novels I was thinking of reading was going to be, A Tale of Two Cities and Bleak House. And you've just made my mind up! Thank you! 😊
@@HydraulicJack Dombey and Son is the book that really got me started reading Dickens. I had read A Tale of Two Cities and Hard Times in school, and they didn't make much of an impression. Years later I picked up Dombey and after that read pretty much everything. If I had to pick a second favorite it would be Bleak House.
@@HydraulicJack I really enjoyed Dombey & Son, I listened on audiable and the narrator was David Timson, he was absolutely brilliant with the characters voices, it made it such an enjoyable experience. The main story is about the relationship of father (Mr Dombey) with his son and daughter, and how parents can have such an effect on their children's happiness. But even though a serious subject, Dicken's humour made so much of the story and characters hilarious. And there was was so many side stories that interlinked. I highly recommend, and think it will be one of my favourite Dicken's! 😊
Perfect I loved this format 😍
Thanks for this video! One of my reading goals this year is to read Charles Dickens other works - I read “A Christmas Carol” every year in December- so this video is a tremendous help as to how I should complete his work.
Awesome I always read one author’s works each year and 2022 is Dickens! Nice to have a suggested reading order to start with
A very interesting introduction to Dickens. I love reading his books and also seeing the Dickens movies and TV series that work so well.
This video has made me want to finish off the Dickens novels I haven’t yet finished: David copperfield and a tale of two cities. Thanks a lot for this, very informative
I've read only a portion of CD's work: Carol, Oliver Twist, Bleak House. I'm now reading (just started) Nicholas Nickleby. I have lived with Bleak House for many years now. It, Joyce's Ulysses, McCarthy's Blood Meridian and The Bible are literary works I go to again and again. BH has gifts that come to the reader with each reading and I love it.
So glad “The Pickwick Papers” is on this list. My favourite by far.
This is so helpful and motivating, thank you! I read A Christmas Carol for the first time this holiday and, just like you said, was surprised and delighted by /how/ the tale was told. The narrative voice was so witty, and I felt so included by it as the reader. He'a got so many books I wasn't sure where to go next, but now I'm looking forward to Great Expectations.
An excellent account about Dickens, well done Prof.
Just starting reading A Christmas Carol last night. Do it every year. Also regularly follow the Dickens Museum in London. Such a timely RUclips video. :)
It's boxing day, I'm reading A Christmas Carol, again, it's part of Christmas for me.
Thanks professor Douglas . A great review.
Thank you for this informative guide of how to approach reading Dickens, my goal is to revisit 19th Century writers once thrust upon me at school, which was viewed by me as work, rather than enjoyment. Some decades later, I find that rereading opens a new world and appreciation of the words used , the subtle satire, the delite of a new discovery. Thanks again, 8 on my TBR list by summer. 2022. PBH
No one here has mentioned "The Chimes," which I think is greatly underrated. Fans of "It's a Wonderful Life" should appreciate it, but what I enjoy is how Dickens, rather than focusing on a rich miser this time, made the main character a working class man. Changes the perspective considerably. Similar plot as "A Christmas Carol," but very different point of view. It's my favorite of his holiday stories, obviously eclipsed by the great Ebenezer Scrooge, but well worth reading.
As far as where to start, I think schools have the right idea with his shorter works, such as "Great Expectations," "Oliver Twist," and "A Tale of Two Cities." "Pickwick Papers" and "Nicholas Nickleby" have the serialization down pat, but the plots were more willy nilly than his later works, which Dickens planned out more carefully, starting with "David Copperfield." A good compromise in length and character would be "The Old Curiosity Shop." Many of the great Dickens tropes, including the picaresque journey, innocence vs. corruption, and an over-the-top cartoon villain makes this a good starting point. The length is also not intimidating.
I’ve only ever read A Christmas Carol and hesitated to read an entire novel. But hearing him talk about Dickens made me want to read them all. Funny enough, I do own a copy of Great Expectations which I intended to be my first Dickens novel, which means that I subconsciously knew I should read A Christmas Carol and then Great Expectations. I didn’t even know much about the story, but it was the prettiest cover out of them.
I really enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities 🙂
Please continue this serie
Excellent video. Thank you. I was thinking of this exact order for the first three as a way to introduce Dickens to my son, followed by David Copperfield. I loved these books so much when I was a teenager.
Agreed. These books were the friends of my youth and I lived a life through them. I wish my son had the patience to navigate these stories.
This is a project for 2022 😀 Sad to say I have only read Great Expectations, although I know the others from films and good BBC adaptions (I missed Our Mutual Friend and Hard Times, I have the book of the latter). People of a certain age will remember James Hayter as Mr Pickwick who became the voice of the original Mr Kipling. Pity that the Prof didn't mention that certainly the early novels were published episodically in magazines and I believe that is a factor in their readability & pacing of the stories. That also make them good for adaption as they can fit into the weekly episodes.
Hullo! It makes me curious to read Charles Dickens's books. . . thanks!!!
I was always a bit afraid to start reading Dickens because it's such a big name and an old story. Which isn't an easy combination when english isn't your first language.
But this video really made me want to buy and read one 😇
Please make more videos like that😍
Man these videos are top notch
Please make this a series
My favourite Dickens novel is Little Dorrit, a rags to riches and back to rags again story which is well worth a read 📚
Great insights, thank you 📚
I’m surprised you did not mention “David Copperfield”, Dickens’ ‘favourite child’! Should that not be the next one after Pickwick Papers? I myself have been reading Dickens novels since I was a teenager. A Dutch translation of ‘Oliver Twist’ was the first one I read, soon followed by Christmas Carol and Nicholas Nickleby (inspired by the theatrical adaptation of the Royal Shakespear company broadcasted on tv). After this David Copperfield followed (still a Dutch translation) and A Tale if Two Cities and Little Dorrit in English. Not precisely the order recommended here, but since then I’m hooked and I’ve read all his novels at least once and most of them more than once.
Excellent, agree with others, this should be a series
Great Expectations is the 1st Dickens book that everyone should read.
Scholars of adolescent literacy challenge the relevance of canonical lit for youth, but Dickens is a marvelous counterargument. His sense of social justice has nothing but appeal.
YES. More, please.
Great video, thank u!
Brilliant and very helpfull!
I am a huge fan of Dickens and have grown to appreciate him more and more the older I get. I am also a fan of a lot of his "lesser" known works-- love Barnaby Rudge, Little Dorrit, Old Curiosity Shop. I'm still working up the nerve to tackle Our Mutual Friend.
I've just read Little Dorrit. Amazing! I still think about Mr. Merdle!
Nice advices mate! Considering the fact i love horror literature i'm holding the thought about beginning on The Signalman.
We need more "Where to Start" videos.
only read Great Expectations in a college course, would love to explore more
I so love Dickens! A Christmas Carol is my favorite novel.
i only have two dickens book, i just received them and im glad i got the christmas carol and great expectations
A tale of two cities , *chef's kiss*
Please please make more of these videos
The explanation is so sweet. But I wonder what the brand of the light is. Looks so nice.
terrific video
Daggone you make me want to run to the bookstore and buy all the books!
The other great thing about Dickens books? The illustrations by Phiz, they put you into that ( along with Dickens delicious and detailed prose) mid 19th century world..... perfectly.
After watching this I want to read about Charles Dickens life.
Magnificent 👏👏👏
Make this a series
Superb sir
niiice video! really liked the selection and will sugest to my girlfriend that we read some dickens this christmas! thanks!
I would love to be taught by Professor Douglas-Fairhurst! Imagine him taking us through Bleak House chapter by chapter... bliss
I read “Tale of Two Cities” last year. It was a great story. Some people say that one of the key concepts of the story is “resurrection”. I’m not necessarily a Christian and I’m not sure what kind of religious beliefs Dickens had but it’s a great experience to see how each individual character thought about what is worth living for (and dying for).
I found it interesting, by the way, that it’s written in 1859, the same year as Charles Darwin wrote “On the Origins of Species” (and that they shared the same initials.)
I thought it was interesting he wrote hard times where he raised poverty, then the terror of the French Revolution…
Scrooge is actually visited by four spirits, you missed out his business partner Jacob Marley who comes to warm him of the coming of the other three. I will hunt for his books all the same just from this wonderful video anyway.
It was only within the past year when a local Peterborough Cambridgeshire UK pub closed that local publicity told of Dickens association with The Wortley Arms when it had been a workhouse. I appreciate guidance of reading order so thank you. My past reading of the Pickwick papers I did find amusing and that as a first Dickens read had been a suggestion by my ex husband's divorce solicitor who was friendly with my ex and me at the time of our parting. Please Will you make a video of the order to read Shakespeare?
I would like more videos like this, maybe one on Joseph Conrad!
I watched your video on Peter Pan- you are awesome!
How come no one ever mentions Hard Times when they talked about Dickens? Very underrated.
Love Hard Times…