Charles Dickens was the most popular novelist of his time and remains one of the best-known English authors. His works have never gone out of print, and have been adapted continually for the screen. Barnaby Rudge was the fifth of Dickens' novels to be published. It had originally been planned to appear as his first, but changes of publisher led to many delays, and it first appeared in serial form in the Clock from February to November 1841. Dickens first developed the plot for Barnaby Rudge when he was in his early twenties. He was coming into his own and developing a life apart from his family. It was a life without the constant brushes with poverty and disaster that were his father’s hallmarks. Gathered around the fire at the Maypole Inn, in the village of Chigwell, on an evening of foul weather in the year 1775, are John Willet, proprietor of the Maypole, and his three cronies. One of the three, Solomon Daisy, tells a stranger at the inn a well-known local tale of the murder of Reuben Haredale which had occurred 22 years ago that very day. Reuben had been the owner of the Warren, a local estate which is now the residence of Geoffrey, the deceased Reuben's brother, and Geoffrey's niece, Reuben's daughter Emma Haredale. After the murder, Reuben's gardener and steward went missing and were suspects in the crime. A body was later found and identified as that of the steward so that the gardener was assumed to be the murderer… You can listen online to free English audiobook “Barnaby Rudge” by Charles Dickens on our website.
