Dickens published nine of his books between 1837 and 1865, and the range is wider than the reputation suggests: comic sketches, a historical novel set in the French Revolution, a short Christmas book, and three enormous serial novels that ran to twenty monthly parts.
The practical question is where to begin without committing to six hundred pages, and the answer is nearly always the shortest book he wrote.
Dickens’s nine novels here run from 1837 to 1865 and from 29,000 to 357,000 words, which is the widest spread of any author on the site. Most of them appeared in monthly or weekly parts, so every instalment had to end with a reason to buy the next number; that is why the long ones move faster than their length suggests.
The whole shelf adds up to about 1.95 million words, well over a hundred hours of reading at the site’s 300 words a minute. A Christmas Carol and Hard Times are evenings, while Bleak House, David Copperfield and Our Mutual Friend are each a month of evenings. If you have a fortnight rather than a month, Great Expectations is the one to carry.
Start here: A Christmas Carol. It is 29,000 words, about two hours of reading, and it has the two things a first Dickens needs: a plot that resolves inside one sitting and the prose rhythm that makes the longer novels worth the effort.
Charles Dickens: which book first
Every Charles Dickens title on editions.ink, with the reading time for each. The first row is the one to start with.
| Book | Year | Words | Read time |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Christmas Carol — start here | 1843 | 29,000 | 2 h |
| Hard Times | 1854 | 103,000 | 6 h |
| A Tale of Two Cities | 1859 | 136,000 | 8 h |
| Oliver Twist | 1838 | 161,010 | 9 h |
| Great Expectations | 1861 | 184,000 | 10 h |
| The Pickwick Papers | 1837 | 301,000 | 17 h |
| Our Mutual Friend | 1865 | 324,000 | 18 h |
| Bleak House | 1853 | 351,226 | 20 h |
| David Copperfield | 1850 | 357,000 | 20 h |
| All nine | 1,946,236 | 108 h |
What to read after the first one
- Oliver Twist — his first proper novel, and the one that shows the serial machinery at work
- Great Expectations — the late masterpiece, and the most controlled of the long books
If you would rather see the whole shelf in chronological order first, the Charles Dickens books in order page lists every title by publication year with the same word counts. The Charles Dickens author page collects all the editions in one place,, and the author index has the other writers on the site. If you want a follow-up by a different author, the read next guide pairs ten classics with what to read after them.
Questions readers ask
Which Dickens novel should I read first?
A Christmas Carol. It is the shortest of the nine (29,000 words) and it contains everything the longer novels do, compressed into five staves.
What is Dickens’s longest book here?
David Copperfield, at 357,000 words, about twenty hours. Bleak House is close behind at 351,000.
Are these Dickens editions free?
Yes. Every file is a complete, DRM-free EPUB, AZW3 or KEPUB, with no account and no paywall.