Read Vanity Fair

Pip, Magwitch on the marshes and Miss Havisham's rotting cake.

Dickens' favourite child, from a blacking factory to a writer's desk; Micawber and Uriah Heep.

London and Paris during the Terror; "it is a far, far better thing that I do".

Please, sir, I want some more; Fagin, the Artful Dodger and Bill Sikes.

A lawsuit that outlives everyone in it, and the fog over Chancery; Dickens' biggest novel.

A portrait ages while its subject sins; Wilde's only novel.

Martians land in Surrey with heat rays; the first alien invasion.

One June day in London, a party and a shell-shocked veteran; Woolf's stream of consciousness.