In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in.

Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in 20 monthly instalments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon. The story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator.

‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’

This story was begun, within a few months after the publication of the completed "Pickwick Papers." There were, then, a good many cheap Yorkshire schools in existence. There are very few now.
If we were to attempt to sum up the thousands of letters, from all sorts of people in all sorts of latitudes and climates, which this unlucky paragraph brought down upon us, we should get into an arithmetical difficulty from which we could not easily extricate myself. Suffice it to say, that we believe the applications for loans, gifts, and offices of profit that I have been requested to forward to the originals of the BROTHERS CHEERYBLE (with whom we never interchanged any communication in my life) would have exhausted the combined patronage of all the Lord Chancellors since the accession of the House of Brunswick, and would have broken the Rest of the Bank of England.

The story contained herein was written by Charles Dickens in 1867. It is the second of four stories entitled “Holiday Romance” and was published originally in a children’s magazine in America. It purports to be written by a child aged seven. It was republished in England in “All the Year Round” in 1868. For this and four other Christmas pieces Dickens received £1,000.

“Holiday Romance” was published in book form by Messrs Chapman & Hall in 1874, with “Edwin Drood” and other stories.
For this reprint the text of the story as it appeared in “All the Year Round” has been followed.

Charles Dickens pen-name "Boz", was the foremost English novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous social campaigner.

Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812 – 1870) was an English writer and social critic, who also He created some of the world's most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period. During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars.

>His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular.

The Trial For Murder, written in 1865, is a short story by Charles Dickens. It is one of Dickens' ghost stories, and is perhaps the best known outside of "A Christmas Carol."

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Now a grown man, David Copperfield tells the story of his youth. As a young boy, he lives happily with his mother and his nurse, Peggotty. His father died before he was born. During David’s early childhood, his mother marries the violent Mr. Murdstone, who brings his strict sister, Miss Murdstone, into the house. The Murdstones treat David cruelly, and David bites Mr. Murdstone’s hand during one beating. The Murdstones send David away to school.

"Die Wege der Menschen deuten ein bestimmtes Ende voraus, auf das sie hinfuhren, wenn man auf ihnen beharrt. Aber wenn man von den Wegen abweicht, andert sich auch das Ende."