I had to study three of them in a single course last year, and I'm not a Dickens fan. I managed to develop a love/hate relationship with Great Expectations, but loathed Hard Times and Oliver Twist.
Have you read any Wilkie Collins, such as The Moonstone?
You might as well start with the autobiographical David Copperfield, probably his most famous novel, which comes in the middle of his career, standing between his early phase that tends more toward the comic and picaresque (Nicholas Nickleby would be a representative example of this), and his later, darker, bleaker novels (still comic, in a way, but it's much darker comedy, and the social vision is much more pessimistic). Great Expectations would be the best late Dickens novel to start with, and Bleak House tends to be a favorite among critics.
There's still a lot of Dickens I haven't read, so I can't give you a rundown of everything. But reading the above-mentioned titles would give you a good introduction to the Dickensian terrain.
Especially since you're coming at this with an interest in the gothic, I would say go to later Dickens, then. So if you had to choose just one, I would say go with Great Expectations.
It's a matter of taste, I think. I'd say that Dickens is a lot thinner, and I've never thought much of his plotting. People either seem to adore Dickens or they hate him.
For me the allure of Dickens isn't so much in the plotting or the characterization as it is in the rhetorical performance. That's where he wins me over.
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Have you read any Wilkie Collins, such as The Moonstone?
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There's still a lot of Dickens I haven't read, so I can't give you a rundown of everything. But reading the above-mentioned titles would give you a good introduction to the Dickensian terrain.
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Thanks much! I had to sit around yesterday for hours for jury duty and got about 1/4 of Dracula read.
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