This fictional work by Charles Dickens describes the everyday life of people in London in the late nineteenth century. Dickens was much more interested in the 'common man' than in the nobility, so his writing serves us today as a record of the kind of lives they led.

Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) had a prolific literary career that spanned almost fifty years. She wrote some 98 novels, fifty or more short stories, twenty-five works of non-fiction, including biographies and historic guides to European cities, and more than three hundred periodical articles. This is the most ambitious critical edition of her work.