manly tone, combined with a plain and concise mode of narration. The
writings of Charles Dickens have been selected as the basis of the
scheme, on account of the well-known excellence of his portrayal of
children, and the interests connected with children--qualities which
have given his volumes their strongest hold on the hearts of parents.
These delineations having thus received the approval of readers of
mature age, it seemed a worthy effort to make the young also
participants in the enjoyment of these classic fictions, to introduce
the children of real life to these beautiful children of the
imagination.

With this view, the career of Little Nell and her Grandfather, Oliver,
Little Paul, Florence Dombey, Smike, and the Child-Wife, have been
detached from the large mass of matter with which they were originally
connected, and presented, in the author's own language, to a new class
of readers, to whom the little volumes will we doubt not, be as
attractive as the larger originals have so long proved to the general
public. We have brought down these famous stories from the library to
the nursery--the parlor table to the child's hands--having a precedent
for the proceeding, if one be needed, in the somewhat similar work, the
Tales from Shakespeare, by one of the choicest of English authors and
most reverential of scholars, Charles Lamb.

Newtonville, Mass.




PREFACE.