The Chimes

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Pages: 65

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Read by Ruth Golding · 4 h 11 min · 4 parts

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1 - First Quarter
66:49
2 - Second Quarter
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3 - Third Quarter
64:15
4 - Fourth Quarter
59:31

The Chimes (1844) is a public domain work.

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About this book

Cold wind, church bells and a porter waiting for work give Charles Dickens's holiday tale its opening rhythm. Toby Veck, known as Trotty, earns small sums carrying messages and parcels from his station beside a church door. His frail body and worn clothing make every change in the weather a practical concern, while his pride in earning his pay gives the scene warmth and humor.

Published in 1844, The Chimes sets ordinary hardship beside an unsettling church tower. The bells seem almost alive in the narrator's account, and Trotty later climbs through darkness toward them, feeling his way along cramped stairs and steep ladders. Dickens moves from comic observations about work and weather to the unease of a solitary ascent. Readers interested in holiday fiction can find a close view of precarious working life shaped into a story with a supernatural atmosphere.

About the author

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and journalist. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius.