Charles Dickens and a Few Familiar Ghosts

 

I first met Charles Dickens on a school library shelf that had clearly seen better days. It was one of those slanted ones at the back, under the flicker of a tired tube light, where books were arranged more by chance than logic. There sat a battered copy of Oliver Twist, spine cracked, pages yellowed, and cover long gone, probably replaced by someone’s pencil doodles.

Within a few chapters, I was gone off to the grimy streets of Victorian London with a starving orphan asking for more. I didn’t know what a workhouse was. I wasn’t sure why anyone would name a boy “Noah Claypole.” But I was completely enthralled. I remember thinking, even at eleven, “This man writes like he’s sitting across from me, telling the story by lamplight.”

And what a story it was! A starving boy who dares to ask for more, a gang of oddly charismatic pickpockets, and a villain whose teeth you can almost hear grinding through the pages. Dickens didn’t hold back. He never does.

“Please, sir, I want some more.” —Oliver Twist

That sentence did something. It stuck. And from that moment, I was hooked on Dickens, on orphans, and on the idea that books could be old, dusty, and still feel wildly, messily alive.

That feeling of being personally spoken to never really left. Dickens had a way of making his characters feel like guests in your mind. Some overstayed their welcome (looking at you, Mrs. Clennam), but most lingered like old friends.

The Ghost of Christmas (and Exams) Past

A Christmas Carol came next. I think we were made to read it in school which, let’s be honest, is usually a recipe for literary resentment. But not this one. This one had ghosts. And chains. And transformation. I didn’t understand everything, but I understood enough to know that Ebenezer Scrooge was both dreadful and oddly relatable, especially during report card season.

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”

It’s the shortest of Dickens’ major works, and maybe the most powerful. Redemption in under a hundred pages; beat that, self-help books.

These days, I read it every December like clockwork.

And when my son groans at the mention of “old books,” I don’t argue, I stage a haunting.

I drift into the room dramatically, eyes wide, voice echoing like the ghost of Marley himself…“Shaaaaawwwn… your literary fate is being decided…”

He barely glances up.
I hand him the book and say, “Just read the bit with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. It’s basically a Victorian horror story with character development.”

He sighs and says, “Mum, I don’t do ghosts.”

I raise an eyebrow and whisper, “Neither did Scrooge, until one rearranged his entire life in three nights. Just saying.”

Dorrits, Debtors, and Dignity

Years later, I found myself reading Little Dorrit, not for school, not for show, but because I was older and marginally wiser. Bureaucracy had entered my adult life like an unwanted houseguest, and suddenly Dickens’ critique of red tape didn’t seem so far-fetched.

Little Dorrit wasn’t fast-paced. It had no ghosts, no exploding courtrooms, and no pickpockets doing backflips. But it had something subtler and, I dare say, sharper. It was like being gently slapped with a stack of unpaid utility bills.

Amy Dorrit, born inside the Marshalsea debtors' prison, doesn’t rant or rebel. She doesn’t make grand speeches. She just… endures. With grace. And a deep capacity for loving people who absolutely do not deserve her.

“She was quiet. Quiet as a mouse. But when she moved, the world noticed.”

Reading it, I couldn’t help thinking of the time I tried to update an address on a document and was bounced between departments, handed several forms, redirected to a website that didn’t work, and finally told by a sleepy official, “Try again on Tuesday…” I’d never understood the Circumlocution Office so deeply until that moment. Honestly, if Dickens were alive today, he’d have a field day with online portals and helpline bots.

The Marshalsea Prison looms large in Little Dorrit, not just as a setting, but as a philosophy. It’s a place where people serve time for debts they can’t pay, under a system that prefers they never leave. It’s like one of those bureaucracies that claims to help, but first asks you to download a form that doesn’t exist.

Amy Dorrit remains, to this day, one of my favourite Dickens heroines. Small in stature, mighty in moral fibre, and entirely proof that quiet people are often carrying the heaviest burdens.

Two Cities, One Tissue Box (and a Timeless Paradox)

A Tale of Two Cities was the last Dickens novel I read, and perhaps the one that stayed with me most fiercely. From its very first line, it sets the stage for contradiction, confusion, and emotional whiplash:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

That opening might be the most quoted literary paradox in history and for good reason. Dickens captured the messy coexistence of prosperity and suffering, hope and despair, revolution and repression. Set during the French Revolution, the novel zooms in on two cities, London and Paris…and holds up a mirror to society tearing at its own seams. And honestly? That mirror still works.

Every time I reread that line, I think: this could have been written last week. We scroll past stories of innovation and kindness, and right beneath them...inequality, war, upheaval, rage. It's still the best and worst of times, often within the same hour.

A Tale of Two Cities reminded me that history isn’t neat, people aren’t simple, and some stories don’t fade with time…they echo. Loudly. Especially when the world feels like it’s teetering between brilliance and collapse (again).

The Detective Phase (Before Sherlock Was Cool)

I never actually read Dickens’ detective novel, but I came across it while exploring his other works. That’s when I found out he created one of the first fictional detectives—Inspector Bucket in Bleak House, long before Sherlock Holmes ever stepped onto Baker Street.

I haven’t read Bleak House (it’s the size of a small brick), but I did come across this line:

“The system is so complicated, and so many people are mixed up in it, that it’s gone on for ever.”

That felt… familiar. Like trying to fix a billing error or figure out tax forms; lots of people involved, no one really sure what's going on, and it never quite ends.

The book includes a big legal case, a murder, and a detective quietly solving the puzzle. Even though I haven’t read it, I love knowing that Dickens tried his hand at a mystery and did it with the same sharp eye for how messy life can be.

A Few Final Words 

So, that’s my journey through Dickens...Guided by orphans, haunted by ghosts, tangled in red tape, and caught between the guillotine’s shadow. I didn’t read everything he wrote, but the books I did find changed how I see stories and sometimes, how I see the world.

Dickens didn’t just write characters, he created whole worlds, messy and magical, full of injustice, courage, ridiculous names, and real heart. You don’t need to read his complete works to feel his presence. Sometimes, just a line is enough to shake something loose in you.

So if you’re ever in a secondhand bookshop and spot a worn copy of Oliver Twist or A Christmas Carol, pick it up. Flip through a few pages. You might just hear the rustle of a cloak, the rattle of a chain, or the whisper of a voice saying:

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done…”

And if nothing else, you’ll know you’ve crossed paths with one of the greats.