The four books collected here reveal much of Dickens's development as a novelist. His early works lampooned the abuses of society, but with a confidence that they could be overcome with goodwill and common sense. In his later novels he had become a penetrating social critic, analyzing the materialism and greed of his age in long, complicated panoramas that no longer solutions that depended on a triumph of human nature.

Foreword

Great Expectations

Hard Times

A Christmas Carol

A Tale of Two Cities