Charles Dickens is remembered as the defining novelist of the Victorian age, but he also wrote poetry and verse throughout his career, and this collection reveals a surprisingly tender dimension of his genius. Here are the songs from his comic opera 'The Village Coquettes,' the verses that appeared in 'The Pickwick Papers,' and other lyrical fragments scattered across his literary life. These are not the sweeping social panoramas or the biting satire of his novels. Instead, readers find Dickens unguarded: romantic, wistful, sometimes playful, often melancholy. The poems trade his famous wit for direct emotional expression, yet they retain that unmistakable Dickensian eye for the small truths of human experience. For anyone who has loved his novels and wondered at the man behind them, these verses offer an intimate portrait in miniature.
