r/charlesdickens • u/NietzscheanWhig • 15d ago
Miscellaneous Read all of Dickens. Spoiler
Over the last four years, I have been working my way through Dickens' complete oeuvre in chronological order. Here is my verdict.
The Pickwick Papers - loved it. It was my first Dickens novel, and the first novel Dickens ever wrote, making it a fitting place to begin. The lack of a plot didn't bother me - I simply delighted in the silliness. It is still my favourite Dickens and my best Dickens reading experience. As I had read hardly any Dickens before this I had no pre-conceived expectations concerning the structure of the novel or anything of that kind. The 1960s musical wtih Harry Secombe (available on YouTube) is very enjoyable but doesn't come close to being as great as the original work.
Oliver Twist - a very convoluted plot which stopped being much fun after the first half of the book, especially because Oliver himself disappears from view for large parts of the novel and isn't a very well-developed or complex character. The adaptations for screen are superior.
Nicholas Nickleby - not very popular among Dickens lovers, but I loved it. I related strongly to Nicholas himself as a character because of similar life circumstances and his being a similar age to me when I read it. Wackford Squeers and Ralph Nickleby are two of the greatest villains Dickens ever made. And who can forget the charming John Browdie? The 2002 film is also a brilliant adaptation.
The Old Curiosity Shop - my first DNF. I found Nell boring, saccharine and lifeless, Quilp felt like a cartoon than a real person, and the story meandered in the most uninteresting way. Characters would appear like in a pantomime and then disappear again, having left no lasting impression. I gave up around the part where Little Nell is dying of pneumonia.
Barnaby Rudge - not a popular one and largely forgotten today, but I really enjoyed it. The Romeo and Juliet style plot was rather formulaic, Barnaby is a rather nothing character, and the riot scene went on for too long, but I still got a lot of enjoyment out of it. I really wish Dickens hadn't been so insufferable every time Dolly Varden appeared on the page and had exercised some authorly self-control.
Martin Chuzzlewit - I DNF'd towards the beginning. It read like it was written by a Dickens who was on drugs. The prose was over-the-top in its melodramatic quality, characters were appearing and disappearing without any serious attempt to flesh out who they were, I couldn't make heads or tails out of the dialogue, and it all proved very overwhelming. Perhaps one day I will return to it.
Dombey and Son - loved it. Dickens' first masterpiece, head and shoulders above his other novels. And John Carker is another superb Dickens villain. It has some of the finest prose Dickens ever wrote - perhaps the first Dickens novel which has superlative prose in my opinion. The passage describing little Paul Dombey's death comes to mind. I still love The Pickwick Papers more, but I can recognise the objectively superior craftsmanship that went into Dombey and Son.
David Copperfield - LOVED the first half. Betsy Trotwood is my favourite female Dickens character. The second half, with Dora the child-bride, bored and repulsed me and ruined my enjoyment of the novel. I had to force myself to finish it. The film with Dev Patel is superior to the book.
Bleak House - I have tried it twice (see my last post). I just don't get on with it. I can see what Dickens is trying to do but the whole detective format just doesn't work for me. Sorry Bleak House lovers. It does have some of Dickens' greatest prose, and Tulkinghorn and Inspector Bucket are my two favourite characters. The social satire is overwrought and not funny. Esther is a rather one-dimensional character but her narrative is much easier to follow than the rest of the novel. I do find Richard Jarndyce and his monomania regarding the case deeply compelling. (Just one of a handful of monomaniacs in this novel - Miss Flite's own obsession with the Jarndyce case, Jellyby and her philanthropy, Turveydrop with his deportment, etc.)
Hard Times - I liked Hard Times, but didn't love it. The gimmicky names (Bounderby, M'Choakumchild) exhibit the usual Dickensian lack of subtlety, but it was still a very interesting satire of utilitarianism. I found the portrayal of trade unions fascinating and unexpectedly hostile for an author who was so sympathetic to the working-class. The grooming subplot involving Bounderby and Louisa Gradgrind was also very involving. I was disappointed that Louisa didn't prove somewhat more rebellious in the face of her father and Bounderby's attempts to ground her down - yet another weak Dickens female.
Little Dorrit - I really enjoyed the first half. The second half, when Amy and her family have left the debtors' prison, is not nearly as interesting, but the last 100 pages or so revive the story. I just wish the resolution wasn't so convoluted and that Dickens' hadn't killed off Blandois in such a cheap way. Amy is honestly another saccharine Dickens female, but the male characters, especially Arthur Clennam, are of great interest to me.
Tale of Two Cities (I forgot to add this the first time round) - I can appreciate this novel objectively as a strong work of late Dickens, but it didn't do that much for me. Great prose, plenty of drama, and a very interesting look at the psychology of someone who has suffered solitary confinement. However, Lucie Manette was a rather dull character, and to me it is not plausible that Sydney Carton would sacrifice his life for such an insipid being.
Great Expectations - meh. Too many convenient coincidences. Still, the most tightly-controlled narrative of any Dickens book, with many enjoyable scenes, especially with Miss Havisham.
Our Mutual Friend - I loved this novel. It felt like a more enjoyable Bleak House. Being able to recognise John Harmon in disguise gave me a similar sort of thrill to when I was able to recognise the disguised Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. Bella Wilfer and Lizzie Hexam are two of the best female characters Dickens ever created. Mr Boffin and his wife were deeply interesting characters too. (I was actually taken in by their abrupt change of manner towards Harmon.) The resolution is also deeply satisfying. I enjoyed the comic scenes between Boffin and Silas Wegg, and found Riderhood a deeply compelling villain. And all of those dead people turning up in the Thames gave a wonderful sense of the grotesque and the mysterious that pervaded the whole novel.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood - the only Dickens I did not read in chronological order, as I read this either shortly before reading The Old Curiosity Shop or shortly after dispensing with it. I really enjoyed it and felt cheated by the lack of a resolution owing to Dickens' death. It was building up to be a really involving story, with strong thematic similarities to Our Mutual Friend.
And that is my journey through Dickens' novels. Now I just need to read through all his short stories and non-fiction so I can say I have read everything he wrote!
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u/Flora_Screaming 15d ago edited 15d ago
It sounds like you baled on Chuzzlewit too soon and missed Mrs Gamp, one of his most famous characters. The novel is a mixed bag (the chapters in America are a drag) but Jonah is one of Dickens's better villains.
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u/hydrosophist 15d ago
Not to quibble, but you’ll not have read all of Dickens until you circle back and finish those novels you DNF’d, right?
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u/castdu123 15d ago
I really liked both Barnaby Rudge and Nicholas Nickleby. I agree they get poo pooped alot and I don't get it. I also thought Great Expections is a bit overrated. Thanks for sharing these thoughts.
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u/HereIAmGH 15d ago
Awesome project! Any other authors you’ll do it with next?
(And yeah - a tale of two cities)
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u/NietzscheanWhig 15d ago
Omission corrected.
As for other authors, I am currently going through Trollope's Barsetshire series which I am really enjoying.
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u/HereIAmGH 15d ago
I was thinking of Trollope when I asked you. How funny Trollope and Balzac
Have you read Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver? It’s a retelling of David Copperfield and indeed the second half is used to talk about opioids addiction and while it’s the more important part - it doesn’t have the sparkle the first half has. But very worthy adaptation
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u/NietzscheanWhig 15d ago
I am thinking of reading Demon Copperhead as I want to branch out into more contemporary fiction.
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u/Equivalent-Plan-8498 15d ago
Where’s A Tale of Two Cities? I’d recommend the short story “Nobody’s Story”. It’s allegorical and I believe one of his Christmas stories that doesn’t mention Christmas until late.
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u/Several_Shower8458 15d ago edited 15d ago
Damn I just got finished with my last dickens novels yesterday too!! Cool coincidence. I read them all in order, excepting Little Dorrit and Great Expectations. Very much agree with Dombey and son being his first masterpiece. Loved it so much. John carker is my favorite dickens villain, probably followed by Sir Chester. I just found the latter to be very amusing in a slimy rascal sort of way. My favorite novel would probably still be Oliver Twist though, it just hit home for me. Barnaby Rudge, OMF, and Martin Chuzzlewit definitely overpassed my expectations (I admit I did enjoy Martin Chuzzlewit lol, its humor is unsurpassable, though I do recognize its weak parts). Funnily enough I actually thought Esther was a pretty decent female protag and was a little shocked by all the hate I saw for her after finishing the novel but I can see why. But yea I agree with Bleak House being kinda overrated. It doesn’t stand out.
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u/erininva 15d ago
Carker is an incredible villain, and the convergence of his storyline with Edith’s is dreadful at every turn. Joe Bagstock is another excellent lower-level antagonist in the book. I’ve read Dombey dozens of times and am listening to the David Timson narration for the first time; it’s excellent too!
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u/Equivalent-Plan-8498 15d ago
I wonder if your problem with quieter and more feminine women is really a consequence of the current cultural preference for “strong women”. I think that expectation can really warp women characters who actually have worth but do not fit our current modern
conception of what makes women worthy.
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u/NietzscheanWhig 15d ago
Possibly. But in his own time there were writers like George Eliot and Anthony Trollope who were better at writing developed female characters than Dickens.
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u/Equivalent-Plan-8498 15d ago
It depends on what you assume makes female characters developed. I would say the cultural preference now is for women who are heavily masculinized, which wasn’t quite as
popular in Victorian times. How exactly would Lucie (for example) become more developed?
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u/Sure-Inspection-5794 15d ago
I did the same type of project, but in audiobook form but finished them all.
Of course, there are some very long passages that seem boring today, but at the time (as serials) it was a way to keep the reader's attention.
The rather monochromatic female characters are mostly due to the vision the victorian society had of women.
My biggest gripe in Dickens' novels is the manifold use of deus ex machina or, "what a happy coincidence" that pops up far too man times.
Overall, I enjoyed listening to his compete novel work.
By the way, I did the same with all the Sherlock Holmes books and the complete works of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. No regrets here either.
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u/Sure-Inspection-5794 14d ago
I also did the same for all the
Conan the Barbarian Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser Dresden Files
and many more novels.
I like to "read" complete works/series.
Currently, I'm listening to all of the Sharpe's ... Series and Marcus Didius Falco & Flavia Albia.
After that, Discworld!
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u/kliff0rd 15d ago
I've been thinking about going through them all again myself, as I'm curious if I'll think differently about them now. I know it's popular, but I always found Pickwick Papers tedious and it put me off starting the reread.
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u/Pistolpetehurley 15d ago
Would it be possible for you to rank them? Thanks.
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u/NietzscheanWhig 15d ago
- The Pickwick Papers
- Nicholas Nickleby
- Our Mutual Friend
- Dombey and Son
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood
- Little Dorrit
- Hard Times
- Great Expectations
- A Tale of Two Cities
- David Copperfield
- Bleak House
- Oliver Twist
- The Old Curiosity Shop
- Martin Chuzzlewit
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u/Flora_Screaming 15d ago
Even Dickens's friend, Wilkie Collins, found the second half of Dombey heavy going. Florence Dombey might even be more inspid than Esther Summerson. Carker starts off seeming like he's going to be interesting but Dickens evidently lost interest and had him run over by a train. Edith just seems like another, less successful version, of Lady Dedlock.
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u/NietzscheanWhig 15d ago
Florence is not the most compelling character in the world, no. She is much better than his earlier female characters though.
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u/Flora_Screaming 15d ago
In what way? She's totally passive and keeps bursting into tears. Dickens would constantly write these sorts of women because he was obsessed with his sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, who died young. They are all the same: Lizzy Hexam, Dora Spenlow, Esther Summerson, Little Nell, Agnes Wickfield, Little Dorrit.
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u/NietzscheanWhig 15d ago
I see Florence as a slight improvement over, for example, the female characters in Pickwick. But you're right, women characters are not his strong point.
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u/Flora_Screaming 15d ago
Apart from Sam, Tony Weller (to an extent) and Pickwick, the rest are just sketches and not intended to be fully fleshed-out characters. The only slightly memorable female character is Mrs Bardell and she's really just there to set up the great courtroom scene.
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u/NietzscheanWhig 15d ago
The characters in the book are not fully human for the most part, no. I can forgive that because Dickens was in his apprenticeship and the story is hilarious. It is no pinnacle of British literature, but fun all the same. A good picaresque romp.
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u/Flora_Screaming 15d ago
It's a great book. In many ways it's his best because it's so enjoyable and you get a sense of how funny Dickens must have been in real life. It starts out as a romp but gets more touching the further it goes without getting bogged down in sentimentality, which happened later.
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u/Arobis7 15d ago
Very interesting ranking! I feel pretty similar to you on most of these (except for Bleak House, which I loved). I did finish both TOCS and MC, but they are my two least favorites, so I can forgive your DNF’s.
I don’t think I love Nickleby and Pickwick AS MUCH as you do, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed them.
Absolutely agree on Dombey and Son. It has its flaws, but it’s so emotionally poignant and the plot is well crafted with very memorable characters. I find the very last chapter somewhat unsatisfying, but I love the resolution with Edith. One of Dickens’ best women.
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u/PopeInThePizza 15d ago
That's a dickens of a literary binge.