When I became the adopted son of my aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood, my new clothes were marked Trotwood Copperfield, instead of the old familiar David of my childhood; and I began my new life, not only in the new name, but with everything new about me, and felt for many days like one in a […]

Although still in her earliest teens, Tilly Slowboy was a nursery-maid for little Mrs. Peerybingle’s baby, and despite her extreme youth, was a most enthusiastic and unusual nursery-maid indeed. It may be noted of Miss Slowboy that she had a rare and surprising talent for getting the baby into difficulties; and had several times imperilled […]

When I, Esther Summerson, was taken from the school where the early years of my childhood had been spent; having no home or parents, as had the other girls in the school, my guardian, Mr. Jarndyce, gave me a home with him, where I was companion to his young and lovely ward, Ada Clare. I […]

There never was a child more loving or more lovable than Florence Dombey. There never was a child more ready to respond to loving ministrations than she, more eager to yield herself in docile obedience to a parent’s wish; and to her mother she clung with a desperate affection at variance with her years. But […]

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I […]

Her real name was Fanny Cleaver, but she had long ago dropped it, and chosen to bestow upon herself the fanciful appellation of Miss Jenny Wren, by which title she was known to the entire circle of her friends and business acquaintances. Miss Wren’s home was in a certain little street called Church Street, running […]

Mr. Vincent Crummles was manager of a theatrical company, and also the head of a most remarkable family indeed, each member of which was gifted with an extraordinary combination of talent and attractiveness, and most remarkable of all the family was the Infant Phenomenon. After Nicholas Nickleby, teacher at Dotheboys Hall, quitted that wretched institution […]

Johannes Chrysostemus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart–what a burden to be put upon a baby’s tiny shoulders! If there is any truth underlying the belief that a name can in some measure foreshadow a child’s future, then surely Wolfgang Mozart, who was born in Salzburg in 1756, came honestly by his heritage of greatness, for when he […]

The family who went by the designation of “The Kenwigses” were the wife and olive branches of one Mr. Kenwigs, a turner in ivory, who was looked upon as a person of some consideration where he lodged, inasmuch as he occupied the whole of the first floor, comprising a suite of two rooms. Mrs. Kenwigs […]

It was a day in late October, in the year 1812. Down the Delaware River, came slowly sailing the frigate Essex, which was one of a fleet being sent to cruise along the Atlantic coast for the protection of American vessels from their English enemies, for 1812 was the year when the war between England […]

The Marchioness was a small servant employed by Sampson Brass and his sister Sally, as general house-worker and drudge, in which capacity she was discovered by Mr. Richard Swiveller, upon the very first day of his entering the Brass establishment as clerk. The Brasses’ house was a small one in Bevis Marks, London, having upon […]

On the ocean, homeward bound from Havre to New York, in the first week of October, 1832, was sailing the packet-ship Sully, with a long list of passengers, among them Samuel Finley Breese Morse, a man so important in the history of America, both as an artist and an inventor, that it is fitting to […]

At the time when the Civil War was at its height, and Abraham Lincoln, who was then President of the United States, was staggering under an almost crushing load of responsibility, because of his great anxiety for the future of his beloved country, there were many of his enemies, who were bitterly opposed to the […]

Many of you who have visited Queens College, Oxford, will have seen there, hanging in the gallery above the hall, an old engraving of a quaint vaulted room, where it is said the greatest soldier of his age lived while a student in the college. This afterwards famous student, who was then about twelve years […]

It was the early morning of a bright June day, and the famous gardens surrounding the palace at Versailles were gay with bloom and heavy with scents as rare as was the morning. King Louis Sixteenth of France looked from a window out over the terraces in their vari-coloured beauty, and saw among the blossoms, […]

A rare good fortune it is to have a friend so true and so faithful that it is as safe to tell him a secret as to whisper it to yourself, one to whom your interests are as important as his own, and who would do any sort of unselfish act to show his devotion […]

It was an April day, and Haarlem, an old Dutch town near Amsterdam was gay with tulips, for there in Haarlem are grown the most famous tulips in all the world, as well as hyacinths, and if you had driven through the country roads on that April day, you would have seen the meadows and […]

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing more explicit than Pip. So I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip. My mother and father both being dead, I was brought up by my sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, who was more […]

As Mrs. Dombey died when little Paul was born, upon Mr. Dombey–the pompous head of the great firm Dombey and Son–fell the entire responsibility of bringing up his two children, Florence, then eight years of age, and the tiny boy, Paul. Of Florence he took little notice; girls never seemed to him to be of […]

“To the sea of foolsLed the path of the children.” Old Epigram. Just a word about the Crusades, or Holy Wars, before we begin our story. A war is generally a conflict between nations, countries, or individuals, for possession of land or a throne, but the Holy Wars were not such. They were expeditions made […]

Jo lives in a ruinous place, known to the likes of him by the name of Tom-all-Alone’s. It is a black dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people; where the crazy houses were seized upon when their decay was far advanced, by some bold vagrants, who, after establishing their possession, took to letting them out […]

Christopher, or Kit Nubbles, as he was commonly called, was not handsome in the estimation of anyone except his mother, and mothers are apt to be partial. He was a shock-headed, shambling, awkward lad, with an uncommonly wide mouth, very red cheeks, a turned-up nose, and certainly the most comical expression of face I ever […]

The first things that assume shape and form in the recollections of my childhood are my mother, with her pretty hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty, our faithful serving maid, with no shape at all, and eyes so dark that they seemed to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face, and cheeks and arms so […]

“Education.–At Mr. Wackford Squeers’s Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, […]

They were certainly the very oddest pair that ever the moon shone on,–Stony Durdles and the boy “Deputy.” Durdles was a stone-mason, from which occupation, undoubtedly, came his nickname “Stony,” and Deputy was a hideous small boy hired by Durdles to pelt him home if he found him out too late at night, which duty […]

Since the time of Cinderella the First there have been many similar instances in real life of the persecution of youth by family injustice and cruelty, and no case more strikingly similar than that of Miss Caroline Brandenburg Gann, whose youthful career was one of monotonous hardship and injustice until the arrival of her fairy […]

Poor Traddles! In a tight sky-blue suit that made his arms and legs like German sausages, or roly-poly puddings, and with his hair standing upright, giving him the expression of a fretful porcupine, he was the merriest and most miserable of all the boys at Mr. Creakle’s school, called Salem House. I never think of […]

Early in the Regency of George the Magnificent there lived in a small town in the west of England, called Clavering, a gentleman whose name was Pendennis. At an earlier date Mr. Pendennis had exercised the profession of apothecary and surgeon, and had even condescended to sell a plaster across the counter of his humble […]

Oliver Twist was the child of an unknown woman who died in the workhouse of an English village, almost as soon as her babe drew his first breath. The mother’s name being unknown, the workhouse officials called the child Oliver Twist, under which title he grew up. For nine years he was farmed out at […]

When one is about to write the biography of a certain person, it seems but fair to give as its background such facts concerning the hero’s antecedents as place the details of his life in their proper setting. And so, having the honour to be the juvenile biographer of Mr. Clive Newcome, I deem it […]

Charles Dickens has given us no picture of Tiny Tim, but at the thought of him comes a vision of a delicate figure, less boy than spirit. We seem to see a face oval in shape and fair in colouring. We see eyes deep-set and grey, shaded by lashes as dark as the hair parted […]

Rebecca sharp, the teacher of French at Miss Pinkerton’s Academy for young ladies, and intimate friend of Miss Amelia Sedley, the most popular scholar in Miss Pinkerton’s select establishment, left the institution at the same time to become a governess in the family of Sir Pitt Crawley. Amelia was the only daughter of John Sedley, […]

Cuff’s fight with Figs, and the unexpected issue of that contest, will long be remembered by every man who was educated at Dr. Swishtail’s famous school. The latter youth (who used to be called Heigh-ho Dobbin, Gee-ho Dobbin, Figs, and by many other names indicative of puerile contempt) was the quietest, the clumsiest, and, as […]

While the last century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton’s Academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, […]

Henry Esmond, Esq., an officer who had served with the rank of Colonel during the wars of Queen Anne’s reign, found himself at its close involved in certain complications, both political and private. For this reason Mr. Esmond thought best to establish himself in Virginia, where he took possession of a large estate conferred by […]

MADAME DE LAFAYETTE! How stately the title sounds, and how slender and girlish the little bride looks in her wedding finery, her dark eyes large with excitement, and a soft flush on her delicate cheeks as she gazes admiringly into the eyes of her “Big boy with the red hair,” as the young Marquis de […]

IT was the twenty-second of October. Hills until recently tapestried, and valleys which had been flaming with the glory of autumn were now putting on the more sombre garb of early winter, though still the soft haze of fall hung over fields and forests in the small Canadian colony, on the bank of the St. […]

FORT SUMTER had been fired on! The whole country was in a state of flaming excitement. Up to that time there had been a division of sentiment in the North, and many thought that by patient effort the seceding States could be brought back into the Union–that there would never be any serious fighting–but now […]

IN all England there was no more picturesquely beautiful estate than that at Bradgate in Leicestershire, belonging to Henry, Marquis of Dorset, the father of Lady Jane Grey. There Lady Jane was born in 1537, in the great brick house on a hill, called Bradgate Manor, which overlooked acres of rolling lawns, long stretches of […]

IN our day any young woman who shows keen interest in civic, agricultural, or social reforms is loudly applauded and spoken of as a New Woman, a product of the twentieth century, but there is a small volume of letters written by a girl of two centuries ago, which disproves this, and it is worthy […]

IN the City of Stockholm there is one street leading up to the Church of St. Jacob, on which in years gone by there was a constant succession of pedestrians and vehicles. In fact in 1830, it was one of the most lively streets in the city, and often a passer would stop to look […]

IT was a day in late April. In the flourishing Indian town of Yupaha, a town lying on the east bank of the Savannah River, in what is now the State of South Carolina, an unusual commotion was evident. An Indian on the river bank had noticed with his far-seeing eyes a strange sight on […]

WINSOME SALLY WISTER! What a pretty picture she makes against the sombre background of the Revolutionary times in which she lived,–with her piquant face and merry eyes half hidden under her demure Quaker bonnet, and her snowy kerchief crossed so smoothly over her tempestuous young heart! To one of the finest old families in Philadelphia […]

IN the early years of the nineteenth century, frequenters of that part of London near the beautiful Kensington Palace and the still more beautiful gardens bearing its name, used to enjoy almost daily glimpses of a round-faced, red-cheeked child whose blue eyes were so bright with health and happiness that it was a pleasure to […]

THE peaceful little French village of Domremy lies in the valley of the river Meuse, at the south of the duchy of Bar, and there five hundred years ago was born the wonderful “Maid of France,” as she was called; she who at an age when other girls were entirely occupied with simple diversions or […]

A very well-known lawyer of Philadelphia was sitting in his private office one morning when word was brought in to him that a young lady wished to see him. The office-boy had never seen her before, and she had not given her name, but she was very firm in her intention not to be refused […]

A certain young person who lived in a boarding-house in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, was approaching her thirteenth birthday, which fact made her feel very old, and also very anxious to do some kind of work, as she saw her mother busily engaged from morning to night, in an effort to earn a living […]

In a pleasant, shady garden in Concord, Massachusetts, under a gnarled old apple-tree, sat a very studious looking little person, bending over a sheet of paper on which she was writing. She had made a seat out of a tree stump, and a table by laying a board across two carpenter’s horses, whose owner was […]

Midnight Heroine Of The Plains In Pioneer Days Of America On a lovely April morning in 1846 there was an unusual stir in the streets of Springfield, Illinois, for such an early hour. From almost every house some one was hurrying, and as neighbor nodded to neighbor the news passed on: “The wagons are ready–they […]

For several weeks the sound of hammer and saw had been heard on the Barton farm where a new barn was being built. The framework was almost up, and David Barton and his little sister Clara, with a group of friends, were eagerly watching the carpenters, who were just fixing the high rafters to the […]

Ida Lewis: The Girl Who Kept Lime Rock Burning; a Heroic Life-saver “Father has the appointment! We are going to live on the island, and you must all row over to see me very often. Isn’t it wonderful?” A bright-faced young girl, surrounded by a group of schoolmates, poured out her piece of news in […]

Elizabeth Van Lew: The Girl Who Risked All That Slavery Might Be abolished and the Union Preserved I It was the winter of 1835. Study hour was just over in one of Philadelphia’s most famous “finishing schools” of that day, and half a dozen girls were still grouped around the big center-table piling their books […]

“Oh, but I would like to be a soldier!” The exclamation did not come from a man or boy as might have been expected, but from Mary Ludwig, a young, blue-eyed, freckled, red-haired serving-maid in the employ of General Irving’s family, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Molly, as they called her, had a decided ability to do […]

A small, shapely foot clad in silken hose and satin slipper of palest gray was thrust from under flowing petticoats of the same pale shade, as Dorothy Quincy stepped daintily out of church on a Sabbath Day in June after attending divine service. John Hancock, also coming from church, noted the small foot with interest, […]

Sunlight glinting between huge forest trees, and blue skies over-arching the Indian village of Werewocomoco on the York River in Virginia, where Powhatan, the mighty “Werowance,” or ruler over thirty tribes, was living. Through Orapakes and Pamunkey and other forest settlements a long line of fierce warriors were marching Indian file, on their way to […]