Penguin Books Australia

This scathingly funny, sinister novel of greed and redemption follows the changing fortunes of young Martin Chuzzlewit. Disowned by his wealthy, embittered grandfather and betrayed by his supposed protector Pecksniff, Martin sets out to make his own way in the world, journeying to America before he learns what evil money can do.

Described by Dickens as 'in a hundred points immeasurably the best of...

Dark, mysterious and mordantly funny, Oliver Twist features some of the most memorably drawn villains in all of fiction - the treacherous gangmaster Fagin, the menacing thug Bill Sikes, the Artful Dodger and their den of thieves in the grimy London backstreets. Dicken's novel is both an angry indictment of poverty, and an adventure filled with an air of threat and pervasive evil.

Great Expectations , Dickens's funny, frightening and tender portrayal of the orphan Pip's journey of self-discovery, is one of his best-loved works. Showing how a young man's life is transformed by a mysterious series of events - an encounter with an escaped prisoner; a visit to a black-hearted old woman and a beautiful girl; a fortune from a secret donor - Dickens's late novel is a masterpiece of...

Described by Dickens as 'the best story I have written', A Tale of Two Cities interweaves thrilling historical drama with heartbreaking personal tragedy.

It vividly depicts a revolutionary Paris running red with blood, and a London where the poor starve. In the midst of the chaos two men - an exiled French aristocrat and a dissolute English lawyer - are both redeemed and condemned by their love for...

One of the great novelist's most popular works, Oliver Twists is also the purest distillation of Dickens's genius. This tale of the orphan who is reared in a workhouse and runs away to London is a novel of social protest, a morality tale, and a detective story. Oliver Twist presents some of the most sinister characters in Dickens-the master thief Fagin; the leering Artful dodger; the murderer Bill...

The storming of the Bastille . . . the death carts with their doomed human cargo . . . the swift drop of the guillotine blade-this is the French Revolution that Charles Dickens vividly captures in his famous work A Tale of Two Cities . With dramatic eloquence, he brings to life a time of terror and treason, a starving people rising in frenzy and hate to overthrow a corrupt and decadent regime.

Journey from Paris to London – and back  

Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton may look the same but their personalities are very different.   One day, in the midst of the French Revolution, Charles flees to London to escape the trouble in France.   But when he learns that his servant is facing death, he returns to Paris to save him. Charles's own life is endangered on the way and...

2012 marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of our greatest and most important novelists, Charles Dickens. To celebrate we're publishing eight of his best and most well-loved novels in this exclusive, must-have boxed set of our authoritative Penguin Classics editions.