Other editions of book No Thoroughfare by Charles Dickens, Fiction, Classics

No Thoroughfare: A Complex and Entertaining Story by Two Outstanding AuthorsTaken out of a health care institution by someone he believed was his real mother, Walter Wilding was brought up, and spent years believing that he was the son of the wealthy woman who took him in. What will happen, however, when, after a curious and extraordinary set of events, the boy -now grown up – realizes that he was never entitled to the fortune he had inherited?This complex and intriguing story that follows several timelines and strangely resonating events that will glue you to the edge of your seat as you read it, is one of Charles Dickens' last works and the last one that was also developed as a play.Several other plots are also followed closely in the novel, one involving a love affair that the young man's business partner had with a young Swiss woman; the other involving a robbery that is closely connected to the love story, and directly involves the protagonists in all three plot lines.The two brilliant authors, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, are able to elegantly develop the story in such a way that it unfolds naturally and is helped along by the genuine and complex personalities of the characters, despite the somewhat forced or slightly less believable events found in some of the areas of the tale. Nevertheless, the novel remains entirely believable, as well as engaging and entertaining in its own unique way – a somewhat unsurprising result when you think of the many other brilliant stories that Charles Dickens had written prior to this one.Today, No Thoroughfare remains an extremely enjoyable read, and one that presents events to unfold in ways that would not be surprising to find in real life situations even today.If you are interested in a dynamic, eventful story that you never really know how to approach or what to expect from, just allow No Thoroughfare to transport you to an exciting and imaginative world.

Day of the month and year, November the thirtieth, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-five. London Time by the great clock of Saint Paul’s, ten at night. All the lesser London churches strain their metallic throats. Some, flippantly begin before the heavy bell of the great cathedral; some, tardily begin three, four, half a dozen, strokes behind it; all are in sufficiently near accord, to leave a resonance in the air, as if the winged father who devours his children, had made a sounding sweep with his gigantic scythe in flying over the city.

No Thoroughfare is a stage play and novel by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, both released in December 1867. The story contains crafted descriptions, well-drawn and diverse characters, eerie and exotic backgrounds, mystery, semi-concealed identities, brinkmanship with death, romance, the eventual triumph of Good over Evil, and many other elements expected in classic Dickens. Two boys from the Foundling Hospital are given the same name, (Walter Wilding), with disastrous consequences in adulthood. After the death of one – now a proprietor of a wine merchant’s company – the executors, to right the wrong, are commissioned to find a missing heir. Their quest takes them from wine cellars in the City of London to the sunshine of the Mediterranean – across the Alps in winter. Danger and treachery would prevail were it not for the courage of the heroine, Marguerite, and a faithful company servant.

In the gripping drama No Thoroughfare, two of the Victorian era's most popular writers—Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens—team up to tell a tale of mistaken identity and miscommunication. The fates of two orphans with the same name are inextricably intertwined, and just when it appears that the coincidence will result in disaster, a brave soul steps forward to right decades of errors and obfuscation.

Two boys from the Foundling Hospital are given the same name, with disastrous consequences in adulthood. Two associates, wishing to right the wrong, are commissioned to find a missing heir. Their quest takes them from fungous wine cellars in the City of London to the sunshine of the Mediterranean—across the Alps in winter. Danger and treachery would prevail were it not for the courage of the heroine and the faithful company servant. The story contains crafted descriptions, well-drawn and diverse characters, eerie and exotic backgrounds, mystery, semi-concealed identities, brinkmanship with death, romance, the eventual triumph of Good over Evil, and many other elements expected in classic Dickens.

In a court-yard in the City of London, which was No Thoroughfare either for vehicles or foot-passengers; a court-yard diverging from a steep, a slippery, and a winding street connecting Tower Street with the Middlesex shore of the Thames; stood the place of business of Wilding & Co., Wine Merchants. Probably as a jocose acknowledgment of the obstructive character of this main approach, the point nearest to its base at which one could take the river (if so inodorously minded) bore the appellation Break-Neck-Stairs. The court-yard itself had likewise been descriptively entitled in old time, Cripple Corner. Years before the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, people had left off taking boat at Break-Neck-Stairs, and watermen had ceased to ply there. The slimy little causeway had dropped into the river by a slow process of suicide, and two or three stumps of piles and a rusty iron mooring-ring were all that remained of the departed Break-Neck glories. Sometimes, indeed, a laden coal barge would bump itself into the place, and certain laborious heavers, seemingly mud-engendered, would arise, deliver the cargo in the neighbourhood, shove off, and vanish; but at most times the only commerce of Break-Neck-Stairs arose out of the conveyance of casks and bottles, both full and empty, both to and from the cellars of Wilding & Co., Wine Merchants. Even that commerce was but occasional, and through three-fourths of its rising tides the dirty indecorous drab of a river would come solitarily oozing and lapping at the rusty ring, as if it had heard of the Doge and the Adriatic, and wanted to be married to the great conserver of its filthiness, the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor.