Sketches by Boz (1836)

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (The Pickwick Papers) (1836-7)
(1952) movie by Noel Langley VHS
(1989) movie VHS
(1990) animation VHS
(1991) animation VHS
(2001) animation DVD
(2004) movie DVD

Oliver Twist (1837-9)
(1922) movie DVD VHS with Jackie Coogan and  Lon Chaney
(1933) movie DVD VHS with Jackie Moore
(1948) movie DVD VHS with Alec Guinness and Robert Newton
(1975) Animated DVD VHS
(1982) VHS with George C. Scott
(1985) VHS (BBC production)
(1988) Animated VHS
(1991) Animated VHS
(1997) movie DVD with Elijah Wood and Richard Dreyfus
(1998) VHS (Disney)
(2000) VHS (Masterpiece Theatre)

(2003) Animation DVD
(2004) Animation DVD
(2004) DVD with Michael Kitchen and Julie Waters
(2005) DVD with Eric Porter
(2005) movie DVD with Barney Clark and Ben Kingsley

Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9)
(1947) movie VHS with Cedric Hardwicke and Derek Bond
(1981) movie DVD VHS Royal Shakespeare Company's 8.5 Hour Stage Version
(2002) movie DVD VHS with Charlie Hunnam and Christopher Plummer
(2002) movie DVD VHS with Charles Dance, James Darcy, and Sophia Myles
(2004) Animation DVD

The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1)
(1975) VHS
(1991) Animation VHS
(1995) movie DVD VHS with James Fox and Peter Ustinov
(2004) Animation DVD 

A Christmas Carol (1843)
(1935) movie, Scrooge DVD  VHS directed by Henry Edwards
(1938) movie DVD VHS with Gene Lockhart and Reginald Owen
(1951) movie DVD VHS with Alastair Sim
1960, Dir. By Robert Hardford-Davis
(1970) movie, Scrooge DVD VHS with Albert Finney and Alec Guinness
(1984) movie DVD VHS with George C. Scott and Nigel Davenport
(1988) movie, Scrooged VHS DVD with Bill Murray
(1992) movie, The Muppet Christmas Carol DVD VHS
(1997) Animation VHS with Ed Asner, Michael York, Tim Curry, and Whoopi Goldberg
(1999) movie DVD VHS with Patrick Stewart
(2001) Animation DVD
(2001) movie DVD with Kate Winslet, Nicholas Cage, and Simon Gallow
(2003) Animation DVD

David Copperfield (1850)
(1935) movie VHS with Freddie Bartholomew
(1970) movie DVD VHS with Lawrence Olivier and Richard Attenborough
(2000) movie DVD VHS (Masterpiece Theatre)

Little Dorrit (1855-7)
(1988) movie VHS with Alec Guinness and Derek Jacobi

A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
(1935) movie VHS  with Basil Rathbone,  Elisabeth Allan, and Ronald Colman
(1958) movie VHS with Cecil Parker, Dirk Bogarde, and Dorothy Tutin
(1980) movie VHS directed Peter Cushing)
(1990) Animation VHS
(1991) movie DVD (Masterpiece Theatre)
(1997) VHS (Masterpiece Theatre)
(2004) Animation DVD

Great Expectations (1860)
(1934) movie VHS directed by Stuart Walker
(1947) movie DVD VHS with John Mills and Valerie Hobson
(1989) movie VHS with Anthony Hopkins
(1998) movie DVD VHS with Anne Bancroft, Ethan Hawke, and Gwyneth Paltrow
(1990) Animation VHS
(1999) movie DVD VHS with Ioan Gruffudd and Justine Waddell

The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870)
(1935) movie VHS with Claude Rains, Douglass Montgomery, and Heather Angel
(1995) movie Mystery of Edwin Drood with Michelle Evans and Robert Powell

Charles Dickens (2003) by Jane Smiley
With the delectable wit, unforgettable characters, and challenging themes that have won her a Pulitzer Prize and national bestseller status, Jane Smiley naturally finds a kindred spirit in the author of classics such as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol. As "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels," Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life.

Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his contemporaries: convivial, astute, boundlessly energetic-and lionized. As she makes clear, Dickens not only led the action-packed life of a prolific writer, editor, and family man but, balancing the artistic and the commercial in his work, he also consciously sustained his status as one of the first modern "celebrities."

Charles Dickens offers brilliant interpretations of almost all the major works, an exploration of his narrative techniques and his innovative voice and themes, and a reflection on how his richly varied lower-class cameos sprang from an experience and passion more personal than his public knew. Jane Smiley's own "demon narrative intelligence" (The Boston Globe) touches, too, on controversial details that include Dickens's obsession with money and squabbles with publishers, his unhappy marriage, and the rumors of an affair.

Here is a fresh look at the dazzling personality of a verbal magician and the fascinating times behind the classics we read in school and continue to enjoy today.