Audiobook: Charles Dickens 200th Anniversary Collection Vol. 1

The Charles Dickens 200th Anniversary Collection comprises short works - fiction, essays, poetry, letters, magazine articles and speeches - and each volume will be a pot pourri of all genres and periods of his writing. This first volume is released on Dickens' 200th birthday, February 7th 2012. Further volumes will follow during the anniversary year.

Volume 1 includes short stories including, amongst others, The Holly Tree, the first part of Holiday Romance and three pieces from Mugby Junction.

Some items requiring a little further explanation are Prince Bull, written as a fairy tale, but in reality a scathing attack on the Government's handling of supplies to the troops in the Crimean War; Old Lamps for New Ones in which Dickens makes clear his low opinion of the ethos of the Pre-Raphaelite school of painting; and Frauds on the Fairies, a polemic against George Cruikshank's bowdlerisation of fairy tales for moralistic purposes, with the interesting revelation that 'product placement' is by no means a new phenomenon. (Introduction by Ruth Golding)