Dickens

At ten, Charles Dickens watches his father’s library sold off piece by piece. Soon the boy himself is sent to paste labels on blacking-pots at Hungerford Stairs.

In this late-19th-century biographical essay, Sir Adolphus William Ward follows Dickens from the green lanes and busy streets of Chatham to the shabby London home where his family’s troubles begin. When his father’s debts overwhelm them, Charles is left to fend for himself in a warehouse, far from the schooling and security a child needs. Yet the young storyteller’s imagination has already been nourished by books, play-acting and the people around him. How did those first harsh encounters with hardship shape the writer who would bring them so vividly to life?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.