What's his best?

>>24508176 (OP)
Oliver Twist and it's not even close

>>24508176 (OP)
Read them and decide for yourself.

If it’s any help, here’s a comment on the subject:

“. . . But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield.”

— Charles Dickens

He’s not one of those writers with one easy stand out, he has a bunch vying for the title. You could make an argument for any of Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, Little Dorrit.
I might go for Barnaby Rudge. Has surely the best pub in English literature, kino riot scenes, a bit of political depth with the treatment of sectarianism and has my favourite comic simile:
> ‘Release me,’ said Simon, struggling to free himself from her chaste, but spider-like embrace. ‘

>>24508176 (OP)
David Copperfield

>>24508176 (OP)
pickwick and its not even close

>>24508281
>>24508330
David Copperfield overstayed his welcome. The book is what, close to 1000 pages? The original characters like Mr. McCawther stopped to be interesting when they had done their flourish for the fourth or fifth time. He should have followed Scott's example and not gone over 600-700 pages for a novel, that's the sweet spot unless it's a masterpiece like Tolstoy's huge novels.

My vote for best is Two Cities since it's to-the-point, has a better ending, and also entertains you with the historical fiction (where Dickens did finally follow Scott's example)

>>24508176 (OP)
Bleak House and it's not even close

A Tale of Two Cities. It has the best opening and the best ending in all of English literature.
>inb4 “BUT WHAT ABOUT-“
No.

>>24508176 (OP)
David Copperfield or Pickwick Papers.

>>24508176 (OP)
Ive never read a Dickens work but I hear he is very energetic and optimistic. I'm in a deep rut, what would be a good Dickens novel to read? I promise I will read it and post about it, honestly.

>>24508643
Start with the Pickwick Papers, at first I found it a little difficult to get into and dropped it but came back to it several months later in the winter and it's now my favourite of his. I came to genuinely love all the characters and it left me very warm.

>>24508643
Start with The Pickwick Papers and then read every Dickens novel. You WILL post about about them as you read them. You will also begin to write 1,000 words a day in Dickensian style. And walk a couple hours every day like Dickens did.

Reading Dickens is great, and the daily practice of writing and exercise will really help you get you out of you rut.

Even he>>24508662 agrees with me. At the very least, read The Pickwick Papers.

>>24508662
>>24508671
I'll read the Pickwick Papers then. And i will attempt your challenge of daily walking and writing. Some journaling and outdoor exercise is probably what I need.

>>24508697
>Some journaling and outdoor exercise is probably what I need.
Walker and diarist here. You're not wrong, anon.

>>24508782
Yah, sometimes simple solutions can be the best. Simple, of course, doesnt necessarily mean easy. Anyhway, I just downloaded the Pickwick Papers, but I an going to go for a walk first. I actually feel excited.

Right. Walk complete. Time for Dickens.

Most of dickens is good

Esoteric Dickensianism

So, is The Pickwick Papers about a bunch of terminally online redditors going out to experience "the real world"? I swear thats the vibe I am getting. Really fun desu 1.5 chapters in, so far

>>24509255
remove reddit from your frame of reference and, ideally, your lexicon. permanently

>>24509277
You are asking an awful lot, but I will try.

>>24509301
it will only benefit you. Reddit and redditors are transient, but the type you are using them to describe have existed since time immemorial and will continue to do so as we march through the ages. You are describing the Pickwickians as haughty yet cowardly fools - men with no real skills possessing a shallow worldview and an artificial "spirituality" which connects them to nothing but pleasures. I will only speak on Mr. Pickwick, but I can assure you he is no such man. He is a noble creature, and... not to spoil too much, one that you will come to admire more with each passing chapter.

>>24509321
Tubman is my favorite right now. The middle-aged man who still thinks he has it with the woman.

I just finished the chapter about the actor dying of alcoholism. I wasn't expecting Dickens to hit me so hard so early.

dombey and son

>>24508176 (OP)
His best is Bleak House, but my favorite's Our Mutual Friend. Of the Xmas novellas and stories NOT A Christmas Carol I really like The Haunted Man. Great Expectations is hard to see if you're too young; a second reading at 24, 25 reveals it as one of his strongest novels, arguably his best.
The only Dickens novel I didn't like all that much was Hard Times.

>>24510014
Perhaps his zaniest

>>24509206
Of all the dumb ideas this board has come up with, this I like the most

>>24509206
Isn't that just The Mystery of Edwin Drood?

his best is, actually, he's gonna die a few more times

>>24509277
>>24509321
>t. redditor

>>24508349
All of his books are overstaying their welcome. People said that his best is tale of two cities and its like one of his shorter novels (around 300 pg) compared to his other things like bleak house (500-600 pg), mutual friend (800 pg), curiosity shop (500 pg). Most of his other early tales like oliver twist and david copperfield are being edited and shortened to 100-200 pg for children consumption in present day

>>24510633
Don't know if this is accurate but

1. David Copperfield: 357,489
2. Dombey and Son: 357,484
3. Bleak House: 355,936
4. Little Dorrit: 339,870
5. Martin Chuzzlewit: 338,077
6. Our Mutual Friend: 327,727
7. Nicholas Nickleby: 323,722
8. The Pickwick Papers: 302,190
9. Barnaby Rudge: 255,229
10. The Old Curiosity Shop: 218,538
11. Great Expectations: 186,339
12. Oliver Twist: 158,631
13. A Tale of Two Cities: 137,000
14. Hard Times: 104,821
15. The Mystery of Edwin Drood: 96,178 (first 6 of 12 parts only)

>>24510633
>All of his books are overstaying their welcome.
What do you mean by this?

>>24510633
Abridgement for children has always been a thing.

Alright. I had a great time reading The Pickwick Papers yesterday. And yah, the walking and journaling has put me in a good mood. Shall be carrying on again today. Thank you for reading my blogpost lol

>>24511413
learn anything new?

>>24511522
Not much lol. I need to lose a few pounds. I tried to write 1,000 words of anything and couldnt. And The Pickwick Papers is just a fun read. I dont think I realized how satirically ironic people could be in the Victorian era. For some reason, I just didnt imagine such a a great sense of humour. The third chapter, about Strollers Tale by Dismal Jemmy was incredible. Reminded me of that scene from C&P about the alcoholic civil servant who ruined everyone's life. Really sad. I just looked it up and I didnt realize Dickens was only 24 years old when he wrote it. A True literary genius.

>>24508176 (OP)
Friend of mine who's a great lover of Dickens and has read all his novels claims Bleak House as a favourite.
I have only read Tale of Two Cities so far, maybe Hard Times next

Joe, the fat boy, may be my new favorite literary character.

>>24512097
>Dickens was only 24 years old when he wrote it.
Depressing how much more accomplished the victorians were than us in literature. I wouldn't mind it so much if there were people who were also reaching their level, but there aren't any these days.

the only one i could stand was Tale of Two Cites. the character have a thousand times more depth than in any of his other work. it's like he was possessed by Dostoyevsky.

>>24513655
It really is. I sometimes wonder what literary skill I would have if I could take all the time I spent in my life watching movies/tv and replace it with reading, and take all the time I spent gaming and replaced with with writing. Or what my life and personality would be like, as well.

But I do hate the idea that, if I were to travel back in time to the Victorians, they would probably look at how I speak and write as how we look at someone who speaks in pidgin.

>>24508176 (OP)
Great Expectations

>>24514004
If you are alluding to Dostoevsky’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity – all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of ”sinning their way to Jesus” or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, ”spilling Jesus all over the place." Crime and Punishment’s plot did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked—placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia’s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.

>>24515974
Is there a Dickens version of this copy pasta?

>>24516070
No, Dickens was a good author, regarding Dosto on the other hand, it is questionable whether one can really discuss the aspects of ''realism'' or of ''human experience'' when considering an author whose gallery of characters consists almost exclusively of neurotics and lunatics. Besides all this, Dostoyevsky's characters have yet another remarkable feature: Throughout the book they do not develop as personalities. We get them all complete at the beginning of the tale, and so they remain without any considerable changes, although their surroundings may alter and the most extraordinary things may happen to them. In the case of Raskolnikov in ''Crime and Punishment,'' for instance, we see a man go from premeditated murder to the promise of an achievement of some kind of harmony with the outer world, but all this happens somehow from without: Innerly even Raskolnikov does not go through any true development of personality, and the other heroes of Dostoyevsky do even less so. The only thing that develops, vacillates, takes unexpected sharp turns, deviates completely to include new people and circumstances, is the plot. Let us always remember that basically Dostoyevsky is a writer of mystery stories where every character, once introduced to us, remains the same to the bitter end, complete with his special features and personal habits, and that they all are treated throughout the book they happen to be in like chessmen in a complicated chess problem. Being an intricate plotter, Dostoyevsky succeeds in holding the reader's attention; he builds up his climaxes and keeps up his suspenses with consummate mastery. But if you reread a book of his you have already read once so that you are familiar with the surprises and complications of the plot, you will at once realize that the suspense you experienced during the first reading is simply not there anymore. The misadventures of human dignity which form Dostoyevsky's favorite theme are as much allied to the farce as to the drama. In indulging his farcical side and being at the same time deprived of any real sense of humor, Dostoyevsky is sometimes dangerously near to sinking into garrulous and vulgar nonsense. (The relationship between a strong-willed hysterical old woman and a weak hysterical old man, the story of which occupies the first hundred pages of ''The Possessed,'' is tedious, being unreal.) The farcical intrigue which is mixed with tragedy is obviously a foreign importation; there is something second-rate French in the structure of his plots.

>>24508176 (OP)
So far I'm liking Nicholas Nickleby more than Oliver Twist or Pickwick Papers. You can really feel Dosto taking notes for C&P and the Idiot here.

>>24516102
Yah, Nabs loved Dickens
>“We are now ready to tackle Dickens. We are now ready to embrace Dickens. We are now ready to bask in Dickens. In our dealings with Jane Austen we had to make a certain effort to join the ladies in the drawing room. In the case of Dickens we remain at table with our tawny port. With Dickens we expand. It seems to me that Jane Austen's fiction had been a charming re-arrangement of old-fashioned values. In the case of Dickens, the values are new. Modern authors still get drunk on his vintage. Here, there is no problem of approach as with Austen, no courtship, no dallying. We just surrender ourselves to Dickens' voice--that is all. If it were possible I would like to devote fifty minutes of every class meeting to mute meditation, concentration, and admiration of Dickens. However my job is to direct and rationalize those meditations, that admiration. All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder-blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle. Let us be proud of being vertebrates, for we are vertebrates tipped at the head with a divine flame. The brain only continues the spine, the wick really runs through the whole length of the candle. If we are not capable of enjoying that shiver, if we cannot enjoy literature, then let us give up the whole thing and concentrate on our comics, our videos, our books-of-the-week. But I think Dickens will prove stronger.”

Been reading Bleak House lately because of those literacy threads about that research paper and been loving it. Much funnier than I expected it to be, Peepy Jellyby falling down the stairs was a riot. Also this:

>“These, young ladies,” said Mrs. Pardiggle with great volubility after the first salutations, “are my five boys. You may have seen their names in a printed subscription list (perhaps more than one) in the possession of our esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce. Egbert, my eldest (twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket-money, to the amount of five and threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald, my second (ten and a half), is the child who contributed two and nine-pence to the Great National Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine), one and sixpence halfpenny; Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged never, through life, to use tobacco in any form.”

>We had never seen such dissatisfied children.

I want to read A Tale of Two Cities

>>24511261
His books are Hans Christian Andersen

>>24508349
The newspaper serial format ruined a lot of literature of that era. It just goes on and on and on.

I read David Copperfield in middle school. I do not known what the teacher was smoking when I was randomly assigned that. I doubt even she had any idea how long the book is. I remember skipping the last 200 pages because I just didn't have the time for it.

>>24516592
kek well done

>>24516742
I'm curious what the effect would be if, when a person decided to read a novel, it was given on the same serialized schedule as the original. Like, if decide to read Great Expectations, and I read it on an app, and the app only give me a handful of chapters a month, similar to the original release schedule.

I wonder if that would be a better reading experience for people.

>>24517272
It would be boring, I imagine; you wouldn't be able to engage with it like a work of art, but only as mere entertainment. It would be too disruptive to constantly have to pick it up and put it down again. Though, in fairness, I imagine one would retain far more of it in the mind.

There's a reason people don't even watch serialised television anymore. The serial experience was always meant to be a form of social entertainment -- of reading, discussing, anticipating, and theorising together -- more so than any solitary and profound engagement with art; though of course that didn't stop people from the latter.

>>24517272
I'm really surprised that serialised fiction hasn't made a comeback with social media encouraging small bite-sized chunks of everything; but it's probably because the gooner romantasy market is too lucrative.

>>24519153
mental midgets go for the lowest hanging fruit

>>24519153
>I'm really surprised that serialised fiction hasn't made a comeback
Isn't that what royal road or whatever-the-fuck is? Cunts will post their fantasy sloppa one chapter at a time

>>24519153
Literotica. Web novels.

Dickens is infinitely better at writing comedy than sentimentality. Pickwick Papers is his best novel.

>>24510633
>All of his books are overstaying their welcome.

Carlyle wrote something to that effect, what with the serialized stories. Nonetheless, he appreciated him.

>>24519537
Name a better writer of sentimentality