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2020-10-26
We've been adding new stories recently, including two by authors with a reputation as campaigners for social justice in the 19th century who were also friends.
Charles Dickens is famous all over the world and has never gone out of print in the UK and USA. His writing has dramatic plots and some of the most life-like characters in literature.
The Signal Man is considered his best short work, perhaps because he’d been in a train accident himself the year before. However, Dickens does more than describe his own experience: he explores several accidents through the eyes of a signalman responsible for the line. We’re unsure whether to trust the man’s strange story or think him insane.
The Signal Man by Charles Dickens
Advanced with audio
Elizabeth Gaskell's novels are detailed pictures of the lives of individuals from many social classes, including the very poor. She remains well-known today, especially for her great novels of working life, ‘North and South’ and ‘Wives and Daughters’.
In The Half-Brothers, a young widow puts all her energy into her baby son and making the money needed for them to eat. Help comes from an old bachelor who marries her but is jealous of her son. She has a second child but dies soon after his birth. Years of unfair treatment follow but eventually the first child proves his worth.