‘Great Expectations’ follows the childhood and young adult years of Pip, a blacksmith’s apprentice. He suddenly comes into a large fortune (his great expectations) from a mysterious benefactor and moves to London where he enters high society. He thinks he knows where the money has come from, but he turns out to be sadly mistaken. The story also follows Pip’s dealings with Estella, a young woman he adores but who cannot return his love.   In ‘Great Expectations’ Charles Dickens explores...

Originally published in 1843, Charles Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ defined and popularized quintessential Christmas tropes while condemning Victorian England’s harsh social division between the rich and the poor.   ‘A Christmas Carol’ centers around a businessman named Ebenezer Scrooge, who is renowned for miserly behavior. When the novel opens, it is approaching Christmas, and Scrooge receives an unexpected visitor who foretells three more very important visitors who could potentially change...

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” Charles Dickens writes in the opening lines of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ as he paints a picture of life in England and France. It is 1775, and Mr. Jarvis Lorry is traveling to Dover to meet Lucie Manette. He tells her that she is not an orphan as she had been told from a young age. He now says that he will travel with her to Paris to meet her father. Once a successful doctor, Mr. Manette was, for unknown reasons, imprisoned 18 years...

‘Oliver Twist’, in full ‘Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress’, novel by Charles Dickens, published serially under the pseudonym “Boz” from 1837 to 1839 in Bentley’s Miscellany and in a three-volume book in 1838. The novel was the first of the author’s works to realistically depict the impoverished London underworld and to illustrate his belief that poverty leads to crime.   The novel unfolds the story of an unfortunate boy, Oliver Twist, who spends most of his early years at a child farm...

‘Antony and Cleopatra’, a tragedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, written in 1606–1607, is considered one of Shakespeare’s richest and most moving works. The principal source of the play was Sir Thomas North’s ‘Parallel Lives’ (1579), an English version of ‘Plutarch’s Bioi parallēloi’. The story concerns Mark Antony, Roman military leader and triumvir, who is in love with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. The main theme of this play is the enduring nature of love. In spite of all the difficulties,...

‘Cymbeline’ is a late Shakespeare play where  he brings some of his most persistent ideas on to the stage. Appearance and reality in the form of deceit is strong in this play. Cymbeline is the King of Britain. He marries an unpleasant woman who has an arrogant son called Cloten. Cymbeline arranges the marriage of his beautiful daughter, Imogen, to Cloten but she defies him and marries the poor but worthy Posthumus Leonatus in secret. ‘Cymbeline’  is built on such themes as love, lies and deceit,...

The ghost of the King of Denmark tells his son Hamlet to avenge his murder by killing the new king, Hamlet’s uncle. Hamlet feigns madness, contemplates life and death, and seeks revenge. His uncle, fearing for his life, also devises plots to kill Hamlet. The play ends with a duel, during which the King, Queen, Hamlet’s opponent and Hamlet himself are all killed.  

‘Julius Caesar’ is a tragedy by William Shakespeare first performed in 1599. In the play, Jealous conspirators convince Caesar’s friend Brutus to join their assassination plot against Caesar. To stop Caesar from gaining too much power, Brutus and the conspirators kill him on the Ides of March. Mark Antony drives the conspirators out of Rome and fights them in a battle. Brutus and his friend Cassius lose and kill themselves, leaving Antony to rule in Rome. William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar...

‘Macbeth’, a tragedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, is considered to be written sometime in 1606–1607. The play is the shortest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, without diversions or subplots. It chronicles Macbeth’s seizing of power and subsequent destruction, both his rise and his fall the result of blind ambition. As a tragedy, ‘Macbeth’ is a dramatization of the psychological repercussions of unbridled ambition. The play’s main themes—loyalty, guilt, innocence, and fate—all deal with the...

Shakespeare’s ‘Measure for Measure’ centers around the fate of Claudio, who is arrested by Lord Angelo, the temporary leader of Vienna. Angelo is left in charge by the Duke, who pretends to leave town but instead dresses as a friar to observe the goings-on in his absence.   In ‘Measure for Measure’  Shakespeare explores such themes as  judgment and punishment, relationships, marriage, religion, and the role of women.