The World's Greatest Books — Volume 03 — Fiction

The sixth day of our being at sea we came into Yarmouth Roads and cast anchor. Our troubles were not yet over, however, for a few days later the wind increased till it blew a te...

A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and cut by stones; who limped and shivered, and glared...

I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night, at Blunderstone, in Suffolk. I was a posthumous child. My father's eyes had been closed...

"Bleak House," a story with a purpose, like most of Dickens's works, was published when the author was forty years old. The object of the story was to ventilate the monstrous in...

He then told me that if two among the mutineers, who were desperate villains, were secured, he believed the rest on shore would return to their duty. He anticipated my proposals...

He was a rich man--banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not. A big, loud man, with a stare and a metallic laugh. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself--a self-mad...

"That is what I have been thinking of for years," said Tancred. "Oh, my dear father, if you knew how long and earnestly I have prayed for guidance! Yes, I have duties to perform...

DICKENS, CHARLES Barnaby Rudge Bleak House David Copperfield Dombey and Son Great Expectations Hard Times Little Dorrit Martin Chuzzlewit Nicholas Nickleby Oliver Twist Old Curi...

We were to be married within a fortnight. It was not till I had told Agnes of my love that I learnt from her, as she laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders and looked calmly in...

Once in their earlier wanderings they had made friends with a village schoolmaster, and now, when all hope seemed gone, it was this schoolmaster who brought the travellers into...

Louis replied by telling the story of the quarrel. A friend of his, a sea captain, had married a beautiful woman, so beautiful and so young that Louis could not help falling in...

One night he lost all moral control, and tying the hind legs of two cats together with a piece of string, he flung the animals into Van Baerle's garden. To Boxtel's bitter morti...

Now, all this was the result of sending home the skin of the blind lion. But the climax was reached when, following the crowd down the stairs of the station, limping from his lo...

There was something so earnest and guileless in the way this was said that Nicholas could not resist it. So he told his story, and, at the end, the old gentleman carried him str...

One day he came back, and said he was in for good, that he had been taken for forty pounds odd. For the first time in all those years, she sank under her cares. It was so hard t...

"It'll save you a good deal of trouble, won't it?" said Mr. Pickwick. "And when I am in town you'll always have somebody to sit with you." Mr. Pickwick smiled placidly.

"Madame," he said, addressing her, "I can see quite clearly that all this comes from you and not from brother-in-law Charles. It was you who planned this massacre to ensnare me...

It was a detached house, and the night was dark as pitch when Sikes and Crackit, dragging Oliver along, climbed the wall and approached a narrow, shuttered window. In vain Olive...

In the household of Villefort, Monte Cristo had done nothing to bring vengeance on that evil man. He had seen from the first that Villefort's second wife was studying the art of...

"First, there is a meddlesome little woman called Bonacieux. She was in prison at Nantes, but has been conveyed to a convent by an order which the queen obtained from the king....

After Darnay had gone, Carton drank and slept till ten o'clock, and then walked to the chambers of Mr. Stryver. Mr. Stryver was a glib man, and an unscrupulous, and a bold, and...

"I hope not," said Mr. Pecksniff eagerly, "I trust not. I have been extremely well disposed towards that young man. Deceit--deceit, my dear Mr. Chuzzlewit, would be final. I sho...

Charles Dickens, son of a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, was born at Landport on February 7, 1812. Soon afterwards the family removed to Chatham and then to London. With all thei...

"Why was England not the same land as in the days of his light-hearted youth?" Charles Egremont mused, as he wandered among the ruins of the ancient abbey. "Why were these hard...

Opposite Coningsby at dinner that night was a portrait which greatly attracted his attention. It represented a woman extremely young and of a rare beauty. The face was looking o...

On the very night before the execution Aramis brought the king a message from D'Artagnan, "Tell the king that to-morrow, at ten o'clock at night, we shall carry him off." Aramis...