What is your favorite Dickens work?

[kelby_lake]

It is all utterly grotesque and so much more convincing than worthy realism. (Mary Ann Evans, you know who I mean.)

A reference to Middlemarch?

[Jackson Richardson]

No more than the rest of George Eliot's works. I used to love her novels, but she now seems a bit on the worthy side. I can see theoretically why she is a better novelist than Dickens - more intelligent, better informed, not so outrageously sentimental and melodramatic, giving us character's inner life - but for the reasons stated, Dickens beats her hollow.

[kelby_lake]

No more than the rest of George Eliot's works. I used to love her novels, but she now seems a bit on the worthy side. I can see theoretically why she is a better novelist than Dickens - more intelligent, better informed, not so outrageously sentimental and melodramatic, giving us character's inner life - but for the reasons stated, Dickens beats her hollow.

I think that Dickens comes out as the better novelist. Eliot's politics outweigh her ability to tell a story.

[Jackson Richardson]

I think that Dickens comes out as the better novelist. Eliot's politics outweigh her ability to tell a story.

Sorry about the delay in reply. I don't understand that comment. Dickens repeatedly includes political campaigns (Poor Law Oliver Twist, legal injustice Bleak House, Yorkshire schools Nicholas Nickelby, debtors' prison and snobbery Little Dorrit, industrial exploitation Hard Times and so on).

And although I don't want to be siding with repression, I get the impression there can be something self-righteous about him when he is in campaigner mode.

By contrast, George Eliot is so concerned to see the good in everyone, which can be admirable in a person but a bit limiting in a novelist, and you'd be hard pressed to deduce her (progressive) political opinions.

[kelby_lake]

My favorites are Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities. I remember reading both of them in tenth grade and it was Pip who made me fall in love with the author. Friends of mine have complained about his abundant description, but I find that it allows me to live in the moment. The way that Dickens writes leaves me feeling ready to make massive decisions-just like his characters.
Of course, I have yet to read Hard Times... maybe it will prove even better!

Hard Times is a good, though odd, novel. It's the only Dickens novel set in the North and it's very industrial and grim. There's lots of grotesquerie and tragicomedy and the book may not live up to the promise of its opening- a classically Dickensian satire on education- but there is still much fun to be had, and it's half the size of a normal Dickens novel.

[kelby_lake]

Sorry about the delay in reply. I don't understand that comment. Dickens repeatedly includes political campaigns (Poor Law Oliver Twist, legal injustice Bleak House, Yorkshire schools Nicholas Nickelby, debtors' prison and snobbery Little Dorrit, industrial exploitation Hard Times and so on).

And although I don't want to be siding with repression, I get the impression there can be something self-righteous about him when he is in campaigner mode.

By contrast, George Eliot is so concerned to see the good in everyone, which can be admirable in a person but a bit limiting in a novelist, and you'd be hard pressed to deduce her (progressive) political opinions.

Okay, both of them are overtly moral but Dickens does do a better job with satire and is the most entertaining writer of the two. There are some interesting characters in Middlemarch but they're nowhere near the vividity of Dickens at his best. Even his sentimental characters (cough cough Tiny Tim) are still interesting.

[Motherof8]

My favorite Dickens work is David Copperfield.

[ajvenigalla]

Great Expectations or Bleak House is probably his greatest. But my favorite is A Tale of Two Cities.

[bounty]

mine too aj...with david copperfield a close second.

im reading a Charles dicken's biography right now. the author wasn't particularly enamored of bleak house. made me not want to read it.

[Pike Bishop]

Bleak House is definitely the best Dickens novel I've read, and Harold Bloom considers it his masterpiece. Many artists dislike their best works; it just reflects their own personal relation to their creation.