TeachingEnglish | Lesson plans

Charles Dickens: Titles

HardTimes

GreatExpectations

AChristmasCarol

ATaleofTwoCities

TheAdventuresofOliverTwist

DombeyandSon

www.teachingenglish.org.uk © BBC | British Council 2011

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In this story, a proud and rich businessman who dreams of creating a family business is disappointed in this when his young son dies, leaving him with only a daughter, who he ignores. Many problems follow when he remarries, and in the end this leads to his business going bankrupt. The man, now poor, now misses his daughter. Happily she returns, married, with grandchildren for the old man to love.

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This book is set in an industrial city in the north-west of England, where people have to work 15-hour days in cotton factories. The factories are dirty, the work is difficult, and there is a lack of understanding between the workers and the factory owners. The factory owners, politicians and people involved in education try to make every aspect of life and knowledge based on fact, and there is no room for ‘fancy’, love or kindness. In this environment, most of the people in the book have an unhappy time. This book was seen as an attack on social problems seen in Dickens’ day.

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The boy at the centre of this story is an orphan (his parents are dead) who is brought up in a workhouse – a place for poor people in 19th-century England. Conditions were very tough there, and the boy is badly treated and not fed enough. He also has some unhappy experiences when he starts his working life, and so he runs away to London. Here, however, he falls in with a gang of robbers. Some good people try and look after the boy, while the robbers try to pull him into a life of crime. Happily, the good people win in the end.

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Ebenezer Scrooge is a mean old man without love or kindness. On December 24th he is visited by four ghosts. The first is his former business partner, who died seven years earlier. The second takes Scrooge to the past, and reminds him that he was once young and kind. The third takes him on a journey in the present, and shows how we must all help each other. The last one shows him a loveless future. He realises he must change and wakes up a new man, and spreads kindness and happiness around him.

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This book moves between London and Paris, as a family is caught up in the events of the French Revolution. Two men, who look similar, both love the same woman. One of them, Charles Darnay, marries her, but he is arrested by the police in France because he is an aristocrat. The court sentences him to have his head cut off on the guillotine, but the other man, Sydney Carton, gets into the prison, drugs Darnay, and takes his place at the execution, because of his love for Darnay’s wife.

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A little boy meets a frightening old man at the beginning of this story. The little boy lives with his sister and her husband, a village blacksmith. He soon starts visiting a strange old lady, who makes him play cards with a girl his age. He falls in love with her, but she is not capable of love. The boy suddenly and surprisingly starts receiving a good income, from a secret person, and leaves the village to live in London. He is told that he can expect to inherit a lot of money. He thinks that this all comes from the strange old lady, but in fact it is from the frightening old man.