These are books by Charles Dickens, most of which first appeared in serial form in the year listed.
1836 - Sketches by Boz
- A variety of short descriptions of London scenes and characters
- Most useful for background and to supplement your character rather than choosing a character from these sketches
1836 - The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
- Loaded with wonderful and comic characters
- The early Victorian Cockney's ideal of the successful common man who now has leisure time
- Good Cockney dialect ' Sam Weller (Pickwick is a Cockney too but speaks better than Sam)
1838 - Oliver Twist
- Learning to be a criminal
- Daily life and customs of low class criminals: Fagin, Sykes, Nancy, etc.
1838 - Nicholas Nickleby
- Theatrical characters
- Daily middle class life
- Lots of young characters ' boarding school life
1840- Sketches of Young Couples
1841 - Barnaby Rudge
- Rioters and apprentices
1841 - Old Curiosity Shop
- Daily lower middle class life
- Jarleys Waxworks
1843 - Martin Chuzzlewit
- Lots of Americans ' wrong country: do not use them
1843 - A Christmas Carol (in The Christmas Books)
- A short book
- Fezziwig's domestic ball
- Good Cockney dialect ' the laundress and other who steal Scrooge's deathbed curtains
1844 - The Chimes (in The Christmas Books)
- A short New Year's story
- Poor but honest Cockneys and rich, evil bureaucrats
1845 - The Cricket on the Hearth (in The Christmas Books)
- A short Christmas story
- Wonderful lower middle class daily life
- Poor but honest Cockneys
1846 - Dombey and Son
- Upper middle class and merchant life ' shipping and business
1846 - The Battle of Life (in The Christmas Books)
- A short Christmas story
1848 - The Haunted Man (in The Christmas Books)
- A short Christmas story
1849 - David Copperfield
- Home life of the Murdstones, upper middle class town people
- The boy, David, discovers London
- Home life of the Micawbers, lower middle class city people
- David's courtship and marriage ' a social diagnosis
1852 - Bleak House
- Law and justice in the London courts ' Jo as a representative figure
- Mr. Tulkinghorn as a representative middle class Englishman
- The Dedlocks ' an upper class old country family and their lifestyle
1859 - A Tale of Two Cities
- Revolutionary Frenchmen ' wrong period: do not use them
1859 - Great Expectations
- The life of a London gentleman, such as Pip hoped to become
- The methods and problems of a criminal lawyer like Jaggers
- The Thames and its traffic
1870 - The Mystery of Edwin Drood (unfinished)
- Because the book is incomplete, it may not be the best source
Other Books & Stories by Charles Dickens
- Little Dorrit - The terrible, unfeeling, bureaucratic Circumlocution office
- The Haunted House
- Our Mutual Friend
- Household Words
- Hard Times
- What Christmas Is
- Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings
- A Message from the Sea