David Copperfield was Dickens’s ‘favourite child’, and is a novel of personal development with richly comic as well as deeply poignant moments. Great Expectations also traces the progress of a young man through life but, as a novel of the author’s maturity, is expressed in subtler shades of nuance. Oliver Twist is more black-and-white than either, highlighting the incorruptibility of young Oliver as he battles with the evil of Fagin and Bill Sikes. A Christmas Carol is both a ghost story and a moral tale which defined the pattern of Christmas celebrations.

The four books in one volume represent much of Dickens’s finest writing. This elegant edition is quarter bound in bonded leather, with head and tail bands, a ribbon marker, gilt top edge, and illustrated front and back boards.