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 fo... Read More
Charles Dickens enjoyed popularity during his lifetime than had any previous author. Much in his work could appeal to the simple and the sophisticated, to the poor and to the queen. His long career saw fluctuations in the reception and sales of individual novels, but none of them was negligible or uncharacteristic or disregarded, and, though he is now admired for aspects and phases of his work... Read More
Charles John Huffam Dickens, an English writer and social critic, was born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he became the most popular novelist of his time and remains one of the best-known English authors. Dickens wrote his ninth novel Bleak House at that perfect hinge in his car... Read More
A satiric masterpiece about the allure and peril of money, Our Mutual Friend revolves around the inheritance of a dust-heap where the rich throw their trash. It was published in nineteen monthly numbers, in the fashion of many earlier Dickens novels, for the first time since Little Dorrit. Dickens remarked to Wilkie Collins that he was "quite dazed" at the prospect of putting out twenty monthly... Read More
Moonraker is the third novel by Ian Fleming to feature his fictional British Secret Service agent James Bond. According to the author Raymond Benson, Moonraker is a deeper and more introspective book than Fleming's previous work, which allows the author to develop the characters further. In Moonraker, Millionaire Hugo Drax cheats at cards, the highest offence in polite English society. Special... Read More
Casino Royale is the first novel by the British author Ian Fleming. Published in 1953, it is the first James Bond book, and it paved the way for a further eleven novels and two short story collections by Fleming, followed by numerous continuation Bond novels by other authors. The first US edition of Ian Fleming’s novel Casino Royale was published with the title ‘You Asked for It’; it took a few... Read More
Rafael Sabatini was an Italian-English writer of romance and adventure novels. After a brief stint in the business world, Sabatini went to work as a writer. He wrote short stories in the 1890s, and his first novel came out in 1902. His most famous works have been translated into the classic swashbuckling films Captain Blood and Scaramouche. However, these books represent a small fraction of Sab... Read More