A rich and impressive site that includes links to and/or info about Dickens and his context; a nice Works page gives a thumbnail intro to and cast of characters for his principal works. There's also a Timeline, and a nice page on the illustrators of Dickens' works. And don't miss the excellent page on Dickens and Christmas. [David Perdue]

Dickens seems to have lots of fans who combine a love of his work with good web design skills, for here's another excellent website that provides a valuable overview of his life and work, as well as few nice extras such as a Dickens quote of the day and a Dickens crossword puzzle!  [Marsha Perry]

A major scholary site, self-billed as "a scholarly consortium devoted to promoting the study and enjoyment of the life, times, and work of Charles Dickens." The site includes a biography, bibliographies, and much more.  [U of California]

"A site devoted to Dickens Studies in Italy." Lots of information, including scholarly essays exploring various aspects of Dickens' work.

The website for this Dickens society features biographical info, links, and more.

Includes a biography and chronology as well as a variety of other resources placing Dickens in his social and historical context. [Victorian Web]

A biographical essay with special emphasis on Dickens' career in journalism, including his proprietorship of Household Words and its successor, All the Year Round.   [James Diedrick, Albion College]

Companion website for the 3-part PBS series on Dickens; lots of useful biographical and contextual info.

A good list of links.  [Mitsuharu Matsuoka, Nagoya U]

A good collection of links and some original material. [Ritva Raesmaa]

Biographical overview, with links to contextual information. [BBC History]

[Peter Landry, Biographies]

[Columbia Encyclopedia, Bartleby]

[The Authors Calendar]

[Twickenham Museum]

[Gothic Labyrinth]

[John W. Cousins, A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910]

Discussion of Dickens' relationship to the London borough of Richmond-upon-Thames.

Brief overview of the friendship between Dickens and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, at the site of Knebworth House, the beautiful gothic mansion where Bulwer-Lytton lived and Dickens visited.

Part of the The Victorian Literary Studies Archive, this concordance allows you to search a large number of etexts by Dickens.

[National Portrait Gallery, London]

An excerpt from Chapter 6 of Nicholas Nickleby which has taken on a life of its own as a separate ghost story - and a moral tale for children (of all ages). This excerpted tale also influenced Edgar Allan Poe's satire "The Devil in the Belfry."

An excerpt from Master Humphrey's Clock. Charles the Second, btw, reigned from 1660-1685.

Another of Dickens' Christmas tales. This work, with the delightful subtitle "A Goblin Story of some bells that rang an old year out and a new year in," was Dickens' first follow-up to the extremely successful "A Christmas Carol" of the year before. A bit more obviously moralistic than its predecessor, it's still a charmer....

Dickens' most well-known work, widely anthologized and frequently adapted. In a letter to a friend accompanying a copy of this work, this "Ghostly little book" as he said in the preface, Dickens wrote "Over which Christmas Carol Charles Dickens wept and laughed and wept again, and excited himself in a most extraordinary manner in the composition; and thinking whereof he walked about the black streets of London fifteen and twenty miles many a night when all the sober folks had gone to bed." Dickens' own night-piece, as it were....

This is another one of those Dickensian ghost stories that rather hedges its bets, turning out to be haunted by the narrator's own self - almost Hawthornesque, actually, especially given the prominent role played by a mirror, one of Hawthorne's favorite symbols.

Another of Dickens' ghostly Christmas tales, this work is a variation on the doppelgänger or "double" motif so prevalent (and so powerful) in the Gothic tradition, with a glance in the direction of the Faustian motif of a deal with the supernatural. A grimmer work than the much more famous A Christmas Carol despite its redemptive ending.

This work, a largely humorous and fictionalized recounting by Dickens and Wilkie Collins of a walking tour in England, contains, in Chapter IV, the Dickens' sketch sometimes known as "The Ghost in the Bridal Chamber" or "The Hanged Man's Bride." Since this is part of a large (247K) single file, use your browser's "find" function to locate Chapter IV. (There's also a nice piece on spending a night with a corpse, sort of, in Chapter II, which I believe is by Collins.)

More formally known as Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, this work is not Gothic or supernaturalist in any way, although it does include several inset ghost stories (usually presented in such a manner as to suggest hoax or drunkenness on the part of the teller). Since this Project Gutenberg etext contains the entire work as one large file, you'll need to use your browser's "find" function to locate the following:

Dickens wrote this tale, also known as "No. 1 Branch Line, the Signalman," after being himself involved in a trainwreck in which he (and, apparently, his mistress) narrowly escaped injury - an incident that haunted him for the rest of his life.

This work includes, as Chapter 15, "Nurse's Stories," a collection of horrific vignettes.
Another brief section of this work - part of Chapter XIV--Chambers - has been excerpted as "Mr. Testator's Visitation."
At the following site, use your browser's "find" function to locate "Chapter XV" or "Nurse's Stories" for the first work mentioned above, or "Chapter XIV" or, better, "Testator" to locate the second work mentioned above. "Mr. Testator's Visitation" begins with the second instance of "Testator" and ends with the phrase "grim Lyons Inn."