How did Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger happen to meet? Where was David Copperfield born, and what is Pip's real name? The answer to every question about Dickens' characters and their fates are revealed in this remarkable book. Subtitled ""A Key to the Plots and Characters in the Tales of Charles Dickens,"" it was compiled in 1872 by a leading expert of the era and updated at the turn of the twentieth century.Readers on both sides of the Atlantic hailed this master key to the beloved storyteller's work as the definitive reference, covering every novel, short story, play, and poem. Each of the novels, from The Pickwick Papers onwards, appears with an outline and an Index to Characters, which quotes the original work at length. Twenty-six engravings complement the text, evoking the world of Victorian illustrated magazines, in which many of these stories first appeared.