For decades after Dickens’ death, The Pickwick Papers remained his most beloved book. It has largely fallen off the map, but once you’ve read Pickwick, you see how crucial it is to the Dickens canon.

Dickens’ shortest novel is very taut, and occasionally some sharp little passage arrives that reminds you of his more expansive greatness.

When the death scene in Dombey and Son was published, all of England was apparently prostrated by grief.

“Please sir, I want some more”

Oliver Twist was Dickens’ second novel, and my first. My grandmother read it to me and my sister when we were young. We loved the part when meek little orphan Oliver, born out of wedlock in …