Your favourite and why?

Whichever one of his novels I'm reading at the time.....

I will have to read them all again, soon. My favourite is David Copperfield, without any doubt. I remember the first time I read it, when I was about twelve years old, in Italian translation. I literally could not put it down until I finished, something that has happened with very few other books. After that I read it two other times, in English (finally!!), and appreciated it even more.
How is it possible NOT to like Dickens????

"Our mutual friend", for the sick passions. I'm a fan of sick passions. :)

It's a tough choice. I re-read David Copperfield quite frequently, so there's something in there that draws me back. The same goes for Our Mutual Friend and Bleak House; I can't imagine a world without those novels in it. For sheer gusto and gothic vision I'd have to go for Great Expectations. I read extracts from it when I was young, then read the whole thing in one go when I was twenty. It really took my imagination.

Of course, being a Londoner, it's fascinating to read his novels and walk where the characters walked. I also like to read Dickens' journalistic work. I know he's got a lot of faults (over-sentimentality, sexism, preachy tendencies to name a few) but his characters are somehow bigger than all that. Which is quite an achievement.

Indeed, this is a tough one. Great Expectations was my first Dickens novel, so I am partial to it; however, I think I have to go with Oliver Twist (my user name being based on a character and all...).

To answer fairly, I would have to lock myself away in a cabin somewhere for weeks and read them all back-to-back. Which, as I type that, I think that sounds like a great plan--perhaps not terribly feasible, but it sounds very appealing.

Hera, I am glad to hear that others enjoy walking where characters walk. When I was in London last, I took a Dickens walking tour; it was brilliant! In Dublin, I also walked where many of James Joyce’s characters walked. Perhaps it is a bit silly to some people, but I find it very interesting.

Like others I find this a difficult question to answer. Oliver Twist was the first Dickens novel I read, so it has a special place for me. And of those I have read (I'm in the process of reading all of his fiction) I believe Great Expectations is his greatest achievement; an opinion that may change.

However, my favorite of his novels has to be David Copperfield. Having just reread it I find that it gains further depth and charm for me as I mature and I look forward to reading it again.

Dodger, can I join you? But can it please be a 5 star cabin with a 50 metre pool and an excellent wine cellar?

Sure tomcat, I was thinking of something more along the lines of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond; but if you’re paying, sure, lets make it a 5-star...and let’s add a personal chef, too! ;-) The only problem I can see is that all of this might take away from our reading of Dickens...

I like them all but I suppose my favourite is David Copperfield. I loved Pegotty and Barkus and the affirmation that "Barkus is willin'"; Mr Micawber, God love him, was so hopeless but always expecting something to turn up. Gosh, I'll have to re-read, is Steerforth in this novel??

Oh yes, Amanda! Steerforth is in it.

I was a big fan of The Pickwick Papers because it was so much fun.

I love love love Nicholas Nickleby.

Bleak House. And the most recent BBC series, while waaaay long, was nothing but excellent. It's his most involved story and touches on just about every theme Dickens ever flirted with (which is just about everything).

But I'm not at all prepared to own up to how many of his major works I have yet to read.

I will say this: Great Expectations? I think it's a borderline *crime* to give this to young kids as their introduction to Dickens. Didn't work for me at all as an adult...

>14 mikeepatrick: I agree mike, I'm watching the BBC's 'Bleak House' series at the moment and I just love it!! I plan to read the book later on.... it might even become my new Dickens favourite :)

As far as owning up goes, I'm not ashamed to admit that until earlier this year I'd only read Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. After joining LT (and this group in particular) I got motivated to read David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby and most recently, Our Mutual Friend. Oliver Twist and Hard Times are now in my TBR pile. I'm so glad I re-discovered Dickens!

For me, of those I have read which is most but not all, it would be a head-to-head between Bleak House and Little Dorrit, with David Copperfield in third place.

Bleak House and Little Dorrit are panoramic novels, depicting various parts of society, upper, middle and working class and lumpen. I think I would have to give first place to Bleak House} because it does not have a villain, though it does feature an impossible heroine in Esther. Not even Tulkinghorn is truly bad according to his own lights. Dorrit has two pantomime villains in Henry Gowan and Monsieur Legaud.

David Copperfiled it occurs to me is similarly villain-free. I except the Murdstones as they are seen through the eyes of a child, and are naturally a bit larger than life.

I really enjoyed Great Expectations. "Pip" says some really funny things.

Nicholas Nickleby is my favourite and next favourite is David Copperfield.

Great Expecations.

It's the only one I've read so far (but I plan to read much more by Dickens)

I'll soon receive some of his greatest works from The Norwegian Book Club (English editions): Bleak House, David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol, Pickwick Papers etc.

Kjell, you are in for a real wonderful treat!!!!!

Wow, I can't believe all the people who have David Copperfield as their favorite. I enjoyed it, but it's probably my least favorite Dickens so far. I just got so upset with David for marrying the wrong person!

I love Bleak House and The Pickwick Papers. And A Christmas Carol, of course!

Well, wisewoman, as in everything, it is just a matter of taste...
:-))

I LOVE The Pickwick Papers. It's my personal favorite. It's like an adventure story for grown-up children, and the characters--Sam Weller and his Dad, especially--are fantastic. Although it doesn't address the sort of problems that later books would cover (money, courts, poverty, injustice, jail, etc), it manages to avoid the sloppy, sappy Little Nellishness that plagues his later work as well. Plus, it has bar-none the greatest Christmas I ever recall reading in literature. The wintry ride to the manor, with everyone in good cheer, followed by the walk through the fields to get to the house, where they find everyone outside waiting for them...Then there's the wedding, and the card games, and the dancing and ice skating and ale and ale and ale. The whole story is a carefree road trip, led by a truly decent human being who nonetheless manages to get feisty when the situation calls for it. What sadness there is in the book is more melancholy and low-key than dramatic (I speak of the ending, which, though happy, does have its moments of sniffiness). If I could resurrect Dickens, I believe I should give him a typewriter, all the food and drink and women he wanted, and lock him in a closet until he wrote Pickwick 2.

I also love Nicholas Nickleby, which is another sort of road epic, and find the scenes where Nicholas works for the theater company to be very well done.

I like Bleak House a lot, and it rounds out my trio of Dickens favorites. I think BH is the best in quality of Dickens' stuff, but of course there's a big difference between a favorite thing and the objective best. Not that I'm saying BH is overrated at all--just that we can't help liking what we like!

Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend are my favorites though I enjoy them all. I remember in graduate school taking a Dickens class and having to read a novel a week. I always managed and now try to reread one or two a year. There's a stunning audible.com reading of Our Mutual Friend that makes it come completely alive. I feel its issues (esp. economic speculation, materialism, poverty and superficiality) speak to us today.

I'd always go for Bleak House because there's no much to look out for as you read through. Did you know that someone took some of the words of the Reverand Chadband and interspersed them with the words of a tele-evangelist and no one could tell them apart?

After that it tends to be which ever I've read last, except Barnaby Rudge which I ploughed through once and will need persuading to have another go.

Oh do have another go at BR. There are some great things in it: a midnight journey across a wintery heath,
wonderful descriptions of riot and mayhem, and some of Dickens's funniest characters. Look out for some hilarious passive aggressive behaviour from Mrs Varden and delusional behaviour from her maid Miggs.

Bleak House for sure! It's oceanic! My first was The Old Curiosity Shop; since I loved it enough to keep reading him, I knew I was a true Dickens Disciple. Like Auntie C, Barnaby Rudge was something of a trudge the first time, but I know I will eventually reread it and find a lot to love.

LizzieD--

That is so interesting that you and a few others say that Bleak House is your favorite. I had trouble with it. I picked it up because the Masterpiece Theater was intriguing. I think I didn't like Esther as much as I did in the adaptation. I am just interested what were your favorite aspects of it?

Oceanic is a very interesting adjective. So you liked the wide scope of the novel?

Elizabeth, how nice to find a new post here! I find everything in Bleak House - it's huge, full of life, mysterious, all-of-a-piece and all-emcompassing.........oceanic.
I'm not crazy about Esther either, but I like her better than I like Ada. The writing is Inimitable; the atmosphere is breath-taking; I adore many of the other characters; and the mystery. I WILL NOT start rereading it right now although I've almost talked myself into it again. Do you like other Dickens? Do try it again.

Tale of Two Cities and the bit cliched answer: David Copperfield. I plan to read Little Dorrit soon because I loved the Masterpiece Theater. Little Dorrit had been on my list to read for some time before the adaptation. You know how some books sit on your mental list for some time. Little Dorrit is one of those books. I think it is the next classic piece of literature I will read.

I hesitated to answer this question because I've only read A Christmas Carol, Bleak House and Great Expectations, but I think that even if I read everything by Dickens, Bleak House will always be my favourite. I studied it and wrote about it a couple of years ago and that always enriches the experience for me. I like the description "oceanic"--it fits so well. I loved the atmosphere and many of the characters (but not Esther, Ada or Richard).

Elizabeth, why should David Copperfield feel like a cliche? It's wonderful!
I don't find Tale of Two Cities to be typical Dickens, so it's somewhat low on my most-loved list. I do, however, read and reread Little Dorrit with great pleasure. Nickelini, I think you have read the best and some of the upper-middling. Will you read more?

Yep, I aim to read a Dickens a year, maybe more (I'm almost graduating from university, so will be able to actually pick my own books in the near future!). Next up is Tale of Two Cities because I've owned it for about twenty years.

As I've said before I think Our Mutual Friend is Dickens at his most mature and satisfying, IMO. (nothing H about it). If you have not read this, you really should give it a try. Another of my favorites, although it falls into somewhat the same category as A Tale of Two Cities because of its relative brevity, is Hard Times. Many people who like Dickens don't care for it though. It reminds me, in a way, of The Mayor of Casterbridge, or should I say Casterbridge reminds me of Hard Times}?

I like Mayor of Casterbridge. I will admit that I started Hard Times in college but only read about 80 pages or so. It was the end of the semester and that was one of the classes I didn't need to read for. I was reading Portrait of a Lady for a different English class.

David Copperfield is a cliched answer because everyone who likes Dickens loves David Copperfield. Or so I feel. This group talks about that book quite a bit. Maybe I am wrong but that is my feeling.

Gene, have you and I had this conversation before? I put Our Mutual Friend at number 2 on my most-loved list. I also enjoy Hard Times a lot and can't quite understand what's offensive there that is not offensive in other CD's. (I know I've been involved in this conversation before. Somebody demanded to know what I liked about *HTs* The answer is "pretty much everything that I like about Dickens in general." As a teacher who had to relearn education jargon from time to time, I was not even put off by Gradgrind and McChoakumchild going on and on about theory.)
(Elizabeth, it sounds as though you have a wonderful English major! I'm headed over to your profile forthwith.)

This is a conversation I have about every six months. As more people discover LT and then Dickens it all comes round again.

36-
I loved being an English major. I miss it a lot now that I am out in the "real world". However I do enjoy choosing which books I am going to read.

#35 - I don't really get all the love for Copperfield, to be honest. As Dickens goes, it's not particularly challenging (not much Dickens is, really, but still...). Plot? No, not reallly, other than a looooooong string of vingettes of terrible stuff happening TO David, with David basically being nothing more than a passive observer of his own fate. That just doesn't make for compelling reading, or at least it doesn't in the case of DC. Dickens is brilliantly comic OR dramatic, but he's not good at being both simultaneously, which is why DC doesn't work for me.

>39 mikeepatrick:

"I don't really get all the love for Copperfield, to be honest. As Dickens goes, it's not particularly challenging"

I'm not sure what you mean by "challenging" here, but I doubt that it's the only valid reason for reading.

"Plot? No, not reallly, other than a looooooong string of vingettes of terrible stuff"

Along with vignettes of wonderful stuff. Some people would say that's how life is.

"with David basically being nothing more than a passive observer"

Biting his stepfather, running away from the blacking factory, proposing to Dora, proposing to Agnes--all these were things that David did, right?

"That just doesn't make for compelling reading, or at least it doesn't in the case of DC."

Then why have so many people voluntarily read it and enjoyed doing so?

de gustibus non est disputandum!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE David Copperfield!!!!!!!!

I found Copperfield slow going at first, but got traction after his miserable childhood scenes.

If I recall correctly, I liked Nickleby better than Copperfield but was a little annoyed how similar they were.

All the various (minor) characters and sub-plots make David Copperfield such an interesting book - the Micawbers, Dora, Agnes, Uriah Heep, Little Em'ly, etc., etc.

David Copperfield is hilarious. It's not my favorite Dickens (Dombey and Son gets that distinction), I do love it because every other page or so, I have to laugh out loud.

ALL RIGHT, people!!!!!!! I'll give Copperfield another shot, and from the beginning, even. It might kill me, but if it doesn't, it'll make me stronger. :)

Sheesh.

Trollope is still better... (runs away, head tucked waaaaay down low)... :)

mikeepatrick, you are a SCREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Trollope, I believe, is better at sarcasm and skewering; Dickens' attempts at doing so with Americans in Martin Chuzzlewit is quite painful! That having been said, they're both great writers!

Fave Dickens so far ... The Pickwick Papers? I recall it as funny and suspenseful, which is true of the second part of David Copperfield also (though I was hoping Lil Emily would head off to a bordello in outstate Nevada after a while!). The Old Curiosity Shop has problems plot-wise, but pretty much defines Victorian melodrama as a genre. Our Mutual Friend was even tougher traction than DC for me - it's really for Dickens fans, and definitely not recommended for "novices".

Little Dorrit struck me as sort of "meh", "there", "what-EVER". Dombey and Son pretty nuch similar, though Susan Nipper is one of the more memorable of his characters (see also: Betsy Trotwood from DC).

I love Trollope, but I've never felt like there was a comparison - in my mind, reading Trollope is a hugely different experience from reading Dickens. Maybe this is because of the series aspect, the focus on Parliament, a different handle on characters - I don't know. I just don't think of them as comparable...

What exactly makes there a rivalry, makes mikeepatrick run away screaming at saying one's better than the other? Is it just because they're both Victorian male authors who wrote a ton of books - the equivalent of saying Fitzgerald is better than Hemingway?

Put me down as a Dickens-is-great-Trollope-is-a-bit-meh.

I think it's because a Dickens novel is an immersive experience, an entire world created which both is and is not our our own. I've always thought him nearer to the magical realists than to Trollope.

Favourites Bleak House and Pickwick Papers which are magnificent in totally different ways. Great Expectations is, I think, the most nearly perfect novel - I can't really think of anything that doesn't work - having to publish in weekly, rather than monthly, instalments might have reined in the wilder flights of his imaginations. The trouble with this theory is that Hard Times is not, IMO, nearly as good.

Did I say, "I love Dickens?" I do. Whatever his great, great faults, they pale in memory beside his great, great, greater writing. Pick a page - any page. There's something memorable. Just to prove it, I'm going to do it.........*running to shelf and back*
O.K. My heart quails, but I picked up Barnaby Rudge by mistake, and the first sentence my eye lights on (p. 316) ends, "---Hugh gave one knock, that echoed through the dark staircase like a ghostly summons, and made the dull light tremble in the drowsy lamp." I had hoped for something other than description, but this will do. Any number of Victorians (and others) might have written the "ghostly summons," but who else would have written "drowsy" for the lamp? On the next page, describing the knighting of Sir John Chester, "He knelt down a grub, and arose a butterfly."
Page after page after page - and I love it!

That was beautiful! I love it when we can stand by our favorite authors so strongly.

LizzieD, you are SO right!

Nicholas Nickelby has a special place for me, as the first Dickens novel I read and enjoyed as an adult. (We were made to read 'Great Expectations' at school and I hated it).

But my favourite has to be Martin Chuzzlewit. I know that the received wisdom is that 'Martin Chuzzlewit' is flawed and that the American scenes are weak, but the prose is just breath-taking - Dickens at his strongest, and I love so many of the characters. (I am so looking forward to Naxos releasing it as an audio-book in May of this year!)

Bravo LizzieD!

I have recently just finished Nicholas Nickleby and enjoyed it immensely. Prior to this I read David Copperfield and also enjoyed it. I think one of the determining factors for me is that fact that if they ever met and got into a fight, Nickleby would have just beat the stuffing out of Copperfield. Even if it had been the older Copperfield. Granted DC later could have written a book about it and made a lot of money. Of course NN would have been the one to star in a play about it. Now afterward NN would have felt some remorse but all in all he could have whipped DC good and not even really broken a sweat. As Uriah Heep might text IMUO.

I absolutely loved David Copperfield. I'm slowly making my way through all of Dickens' works (having only read Hard Times, Bleak House, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiousity Shop, Great Expectations, and Oliver Twist and some of his Christmas stories).

I love A Christmas Carol and reread it every Christmas (possibly in the hope that like Scrooge I shall become a better person!) and watch every version on the television to get me in the right Christmas spirit!However, my absolute favourite Dickens is Our Mutual Friend, for many many reasons. If I have to choose one it is the character of Mr Venus - brilliant. I love the seen where Wegg visits him to buy back his leg...

There is a lot to love in Our Mutual Friend personally, I love Mrs Wilfer and Sloppy - 'ee do the police in different voices". And the mad destructive love of Bradley Headstone and the Decline and Fall of the Rooshan Empire and the Podsnaps and the Veneerings and Lady Tippins who "had a long drab face, like a face in a tablespoon" and the man who can't say anything in French except "Esker".

I just think there's something clumsy and inartistic about the Noddy Boffin Arc - I could see it happening for real, but not for pretend. If you see what I mean?

esker....
HAHAHA

Great Expectations for me. I enjoyed the life journey of Pip. His world was turned upside down. Small town to London. Escaped convicts. Lost love. Debtors prison. All good stuff.

A Tale of Two Cities is my favourite, so far. Very quotable.

Great Expectations was also, well... great. I especially like the scene where he's riding with his 'uncle', who is grilling him on his arithmetic tables. My father used to do that. Drove me crazy!

Great Expectations will always be my favourite Dickens, because that was my first of his full novels at the age of 14 after seeing a BBC adaptation. But I think David Copperfield is probably the best of his I have read and is my second favourite. Then probably, again for youthful reasons Tale of Two Cities. After that Nicholas Nickleby which I am nearing the end of now. But I have read only 10 of the 15.

My favourite?

Our Mutual Friend. No question.
I realize this is a pretty odd choice, and, as I saw earlier, someone said that this one "wasn't for novices".
Well. This one was my first, and I instantly fell in love with it.
Why? Well, firstly, see my username. I don't know what I love so much about her, but I find badass little cripple that is Miss Jenny Wren absolutely fascinating and entrancing and generally amazing. A little creepy, I suppose, but awesome.
And every single other character. Lizzie, Eugene, Sloppy, Mr Venus....
Dickens is the god of creating characters, is he not?

Little Dorrit and Great Expectations would have to be my second favourites...

#65 intriguing. Perhaps I will have to move this up the list. Since posting my last message, I have read Sketches by Boz, which was variable but had some great gems in it.

My favourites are Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, because they are the stories that have kept me engaged the most. There are some I haven't read yet though.

I'll be the first to say my favorite is Dombey and Son. The characters are terrific, and the story is so intricate, with so many intertwining plots -- I've read it three times now, and love it every time. Of course, I could probably say that about any Dickens, but Dombey is without a doubt my favorite.

Hard to pick a favorite Dickens, really. I think I have favorite characters from different novels rather than a specific favorite novel. I do love all the orphan novels, of course. For now, I suppose, if I had to pick, I'd go with Oliver Twist as it was my first Dickens.

By the way, Dickens aficionados posting here might also be interested in this new thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/152593

A description of the group is here: http://www.librarything.com/groups/snoopingtheshelvesof

Hope to see some of you there. :)

Jennyblatt, have you read any of the sequels that follow the Artful Dodger? I'll look into your group.

Adrian, sorry for the delayed reply. I was offline for a bit due to exams. I haven't read the sequels you mention.... I see that you mentioned them over in the other thread as well. I will definitely look them up, though. I've always thought that many of Dickens' characters could have developed into entire novels of their own, given how weird/unique some of them were. Thanks.

Complaints about Dickens: "-ism" this and "-ism" that. Let it go..! Its 150 years ago! When you love something you accept any and all warts.

:p

Great thread. My reading is limited to Hard Times, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and the shorter works.

But I'm 95% through The Pickwick Papers and am really going to regret this serial's end! I'm usually not too fond of those 18th and 19the century picaresque tales, but this Dickens guy is simply hilarious.

I'm wondering if Sam Clemens (my literary hero and another guy who wasn't afraid to generate pages upon pages) read Dickens?

>73 Sandydog1:, you've made me curious as well. I seemed to remember Twain commenting on Dickens, so I did some googling.

Twain as a young reporter attending one of Dickens' readings:
http://charlesdickenspage.com/twain_on_dickens.html

The Mark Twain House & Museum quotes from the above, and has some more insight:
http://marktwainhouse.blogspot.ca/2010/12/twain-dickens.html

I've read all the novels at least once, and my favorite is Bleak House. I love the complex plots and connections among the characters, and I even like Esther, though I seem to be in the minority. At least one commentator notes that she is a very good portrait of a victim of emotional abuse, and I agree. But she's still smart and observant. She's a breakthrough for her time. I first read Bleak House in college; actually I was supposed to, but it was for a course that had 9 novels, at the same time as I had two other lit courses and a philosophy course, so some things had to give. But after graduation when I settled down to it, I couldn't put it down!

I had already read David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities for classes in high school, and I enjoyed them then and still do. But my second-favorite novel is Martin Chuzzlewit. It was the characters that got me. The satire goes in every direction, and it's just a plain fun read.

My least favorites are Little Dorrit, Barnaby Rudge (I'm not sure I've even read it all the way through), and, oddly enough,The Pickwick Papers. For that last I think it's the 18th-century style of language. For a long time I didn't react to the humor, because the style dulled it.

The one Dickens work I saw on TV (in several versions) before having actually read it is, of course, A Christmas Carol. I read it faithfully every year, watch every adaptation (good or bad) that presents itself, and listen to the Patrick Stewart audio tape. It's a wonder I haven't memorized it by now. But for the past several years I've started reading the other Christmas books every winter as well.

Pickwick Papers! I was going through a really low point in my life and this book made me laugh so hard, I had to close it when I was in public.

Well I read A Christmas Carol every year: who doesn't? David Copperfield is a page turner. A Tale of two Cities is an evocative read. Great Expectations is the ubiquitous classic. So I don't know what is best. But I haven't read so much...

I'm not a fan of anything XMAS-related. So I am at least one person who doesn't turn to 'Carol'.
I used to read 'Tale of Two Cities' every year but the pace of life doesn't permit that anymore.

I was stunned by the breadth and scope of 'Bleak House' and am ready to agree with critics that it is the greatest English novel. Although I enjoyed it...my personal fave, it is not. I lay it down at #3 though, which is pretty high esteem.

My #1 pick, 'Tale of Two Cities'
My #2 pick, 'Little Dorritt'
My #3 pick, 'Bleak House'.

I only mildly enjoyed 'Our Mutual Friend'. Some parts of that otherwise fine work, just didn't carry across to me. It took me a long while to figure out that the husband & wife lived in some kind of junkyard. And then, the villain with his heavy, obfuscating Cockney speech mannerisms. It became painful labor to decipher his dialogue.

But I loved the motif of the river Thames as the unifying theme; the scenes set by the wharfs and mudflats..and some of the other bits as well. The romance was interesting.

"Little Dorritt" holds my pleasure at #2. It had me hooting out loud.

>78 Dzerzhinsky: It is April, 2021 and I just fell upon this group and this post and I had to reply. I agree totally with your three top choices, and in the same order! Love them. And reading Oliver Twist and struggling. I just feel it dragged on and on. Thank you for post!

>79 DebraGraham: Have you read David Copperfield? It is, IMO, the best. But I also love Bleak House and Tale of Two Cities. Have not yet read Little Dorritt.

I have read David Copperfield, but love others more. Perhaps the strong female leads in the others? Reading Oliver now, but feel as if I am plodding through. 1/2 way and not loving it. Wow. Does it get better?