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My father&#39;s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.<br><br>I give Pirrip as my father&#39;s family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister,&mdash;Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father&#39;s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, &quot;Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,&quot; I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave,…

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Using only Charles Dickens’ extraordinary words and a chameleon ensemble of eight actors, Neil Bartlett's powerful stage version of this much-loved story brings its settings and characters to thrilling theatrical life.From its opening image of little Pip, alone on the windswept marshes, to the haunted darkness of mad Miss Haversham's cobweb-strewn lair, this brand-new adaptation especially commissioned by Aberystwyth Arts Centre takes its audience on a journey right to the heart of Dickens’ great exploration of childhood terrors and hopes – and of adult dreams and regrets.

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‘Oh, but he was a squeezing, wrenching, scraping, grasping kind of a Scrooge; a clutching, covetous old sinner…’Using only Charles Dickens' extraordinary words and a chameleon ensemble of eight actors, Neil Bartlett's A Christmas Carol is a bold theatrical reimagining of a classic Christmas story. This stage version was adapted for the festive season of 2002-3, and played to full houses and critical acclaim at both the Lyric Hammersmith, London, and the Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow.‘Gets right to the frozen heart of Dickens' classic Christmas tale…one of those rare festive offerings for which no adult will need the excuse of a child in tow…’ – Guardian

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‘It is a solemn thing to hear, in a darkened room, the voice of a child…’Using Charles Dickens’ original words, a handful of tunes stolen from the vivid world of Victorian music-hall, and a chameleon ensemble of thirteen actors, Neil Bartlett’s powerful version of Oliver Twist brings the dark underbelly of nineteenth-century London back to bold theatrical life. The unforgettable characters – Fagin, Nancy, Bill Sikes, and the Artful Dodger – inhabit a world filled with images of danger and fear, innocence and hope; a world seen through the eyes of an astonished child. This version was first performed at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2004.

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Pip, a poor village boy, finds two chance meetings set his life on an unexpected course. At the water’s edge, he has a terrifying encounter with an escaped convict. In the decaying grandeur of Miss Haversham’s house, he falls hopelessly in love with the heartless Estella. When an anonymous benefactor helps him move to Calcutta, the heart of the British Raj, Pip pursues his great expectations and his dream of winning Estella’s heart. Relocating Pip’s extraordinary journey to nineteenth-century India, this coming-of-age story, evoking some of Dickens’ most colourful characters, is faithful to the period of the book and the richness of Dickens’ language – a vivid theatrical retelling of a universally loved masterpiece.

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Using only Charles Dickens’ extraordinary words and a chameleon ensemble of actors, Neil Bartlett’s powerful stage versions of Dickens have gathered wide critical acclaim. This volume contains Bartlett’s versions of Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist. ‘Gets right to the frozen heart of Dickens’ classic Christmas tale…one of those rare festive offerings for which no adult will need the excuse of a child in tow…’ Guardian ‘A magical refashioning of tradition.’ Observer Between them, these adaptations have had over a hundred productions. They have been widely performed by schools, universities and community theatre groups throughout the English-speaking world and theatres that have produced them include London’s Lyric Hammersmith, the Bristol Old Vic, the Southwark Playhouse, the Glasgow Citizens, the American Repertory Theatre in Boston and the La Jolla Playhouse(USA).

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The treacherous Uriah Heep, the jovial nurse Peggotty, the adorably dim-witted Dora, the improvident Mr Micawber and the egotistic and charming Steerforth come to life in this new adaptation of Dickens’ classic. From seaside Yarmouth to London and beyond, as plots and counterplots effortlessly interweave into one intricate, grand design, David Copperfield captures the brightness, magic and terror of the world as seen through the eyes of a child: his bafflement turning to self-awareness and his young heart growing ever more disciplined and true.

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Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English short story writer, dramatist, essayist, and the most popular novelist to come out of the Victorian era. Many of his novels, with their frequent concern for social reform, were first published in magazines in serialized form under the pseudonym, Boz. Unlike authors who completed entire novels before serialization, Dickens often created the episodes as they were being serialized. The continuing popularity of his novels and short stories is such that they have never gone out of print. In «Dombey and Son», the title character, Mr. Dombey, is a wealthy shipping merchant whose wife dies giving birth to their second child, a long-hoped for son and heir, Paul. The elder child, Florence, being female, is neglected by her father. Paul's health is broken by the rigors of boarding school, which leads to the demise of Mr. Dombey. The Dombey family experiences a series of trials and tribulations and ultimately the family's reconciliation concludes the book in a typically Dickensian fashion.

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"A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, and The Cricket on the Hearth" contains three of Charles Dickens most popular Christmas-time stories. In «A Christmas Carol» we have the classic story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly old man who is visited by ghosts prior to Christmas to show him the error of his ways. In «The Chimes» we have the story of Toby Veck, a poor working-class man who has lost his faith in human nature. On New Year's Eve he is visited by spirits who show him that nobody is born evil, but rather that crime and poverty are constructs of man. In «The Cricket on the Hearth» we have the story of John Peerybingle and his family who have a guardian angel in the form of a cricket who is constantly chirping on the hearth. These classic holiday tales will delight readers of all ages.

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Charles Dickens’s tenth novel, which was first published serially in Dickens’s own periodical journal “Household Words” in 1854, “Hard Times,” is a work that sought to highlight the social and economic divide that was growing between capitalistic mill owners and workers during the Victorian era of Great Britain. Set in the fictitious Coketown, “Hard Times” is a critical examination of the poor working conditions in many English factory towns of the time as well as the changing nature of the aristocracy and the working-class in the second half of the 19th century. The novel centers on the lives of Thomas Gradgrind, senior, the superintendent of the local school, his children, Louisa and Thomas, junior, and Sissy Jupe, a free-spirited circus girl who struggles to fit in as a student under the rigidly utilitarian instruction of the Gradgrind school. Through the lives of Gradgrind’s children, Dickens’s seeks to criticize the failure of excessively utilitarian philosophy which was so prevalent during his time. As Louisa finds herself in an unhappy marriage and Thomas, junior, descends into a life of moral corruption, their father begins to realize the shortcomings of the philosophy that he has so rigidly applied in raising them. This edition includes an introduction by Edwin Percy Whipple.

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