My grandfather, who was born when Charles Dickens was still alive and writing, left me his books, including copies of David Copperfield, Bleak House and Barnaby Rudge, which is good because at no point in either grade school or high school did Dickens appear on any reading list. Dickens was – and still is – one of the most famous novelists ever, but like Mark Twain and Tolstoy, I have no sense whatever that he's being read. Back at the end of World War Two, when David Lean was a young director presented with Dickens' Great Expectations as his next...