Charles Dickens and inspiring a new class of readers. Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, "A Christmas Carol", remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. "Oliver Twist" and "Great Expectations" are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, "A Tale of Two Cities", set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell, G. K. Chesterton and Tom Wolfe—for his realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations,
Abel Magwitch is surprised by Magwitch: "[a] fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin." Magwitch tricks the seven-year-old boy into believing that he has an accomplice who is