The Journal
The best Dickens novels to start with
Dickens wrote fifteen completed novels. They are not all equal, and they are not all equally accessible to a first-time reader. This is where to start, what to read next, and what to save for when you are already committed.
Start here: A Christmas Carol (1843)#
A Christmas Carol is 78 pages. It is perfectly structured. It demonstrates everything Dickens does well -- the comic grotesque, the sentimental appeal, the social argument, the transformation of character through confrontation with what could be and what was -- in a form so concentrated that nothing is wasted. Dickens wrote it in six weeks to save himself from financial ruin. The urgency is still in the prose. Free on Foxing. Reading time: 2-3 hours.
For the first full novel: Great Expectations (1861)#
Great Expectations is the most psychologically sophisticated of Dickens's novels and the most accessible to modern readers. Pip's story -- a poor blacksmith's apprentice who comes into money, acquires pretensions, and has to learn what that costs -- is the clearest expression of what Dickens thought about class, shame, ambition, and genuine worth. It is also the most autobiographical of the major novels after David Copperfield. Reading time: 15-18 hours.
For the most ambitious Dickens: Bleak House (1852-1853)#
Bleak House is what Dickens could do at full scale with full powers. Two parallel narrators -- the self-effacing Esther Summerson in the first person and an unnamed omniscient narrator in the third -- tell a story about an interminable court case, a spontaneously combusting rag dealer, a murdered lawyer, a ghost-writing nobleman, and the general devastation of a legal system so bloated with procedure that it destroys everyone who enters it. It is 800 pages and every page earns its place. Reading time: 30-35 hours.
For Dickens at his most personal: David Copperfield (1849-1850)#
David Copperfield is the novel Dickens described as his "favourite child." It is the most autobiographical of the major novels -- the blacking factory, the humiliation, the escape through talent -- and has the warmest, most sustained emotional register of any of his books. Dickens biographer Peter Ackroyd called it "the finest sustained piece of autobiographical writing in the English language." Reading time: 28-32 hours.
The one to save: Little Dorrit (1855-1857)#
Little Dorrit is the darkest of the major Dickens novels -- a study of imprisonment (literal, financial, psychological, social) that draws on everything Dickens knew about his father's time in the Marshalsea. Many Dickens scholars consider it his finest work. Save it until you are already committed to him. Reading time: 30-35 hours.
Further reading#
For the life of Dickens and what made his approach to fiction different, who Charles Dickens was and what made him different is the companion piece.
For other Victorian fiction after Dickens, classic books for people who don't usually read classics has recommendations across the full tradition.
Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol are free on Foxing.