It’s really more than a bit embarrassing that I have never read a Dickens novel from start to finish. So, I put it to my fellow Dopers, if you had to recommend one of his novels as the best place to start for the uninitiated, which would it be?
A Tale Of Two Cities is probably a good place to start: beautifully written, and a fantastically memorable portrait of the French Revolution. It’s one of his shorter works, and has a relatively straightforward plot and not too many characters - not that these are bad things, but for the uninitiated, launching straight into Nicholas Nickleby may put you straight off: ATOTC is Dickens in “gripping yarn” mode. If you enjoy that, try Great Expectations next - again, not too long {not being serialised}, but more in the classically Dickensian mode of a complex {although not convoluted} plot and a host of unforgettable minor characters: it’s an excellent read. After that you’ll be ready for the long stuff, so on to David Copperfield. And after that, you’ll be ready to tackle anything he can throw at you.
I’ll echo that.
A Christmas Carol. Everyone knows the story and has seen it on screen a million times, but how many have read it?
My advice is a bit different from Case Sensitive’s, since, in general, I’ve not enjoyed Dickens’s short novels (especially Tale of Two Cities, which I found about as exciting as watching paint dry – it’s not as dull as Hard Times, but it’s close).
To my mind, his best novel is Bleak House, which also has a marvellously evocative first chapter – reading that really gives you a feel for London in the mid-19th century. So I’d suggest reading the beginning of that book, and, if it grabs you, continuing on. But that is quite a long novel, and would probably take some time to read.
Or you could try Great Expectations, another wonderful novel, and one that’s substantially shorter. That’s also told in first-person, which makes it more immediate (and possibly easier for a 21st century reader to enter into the world).
If you want to read bits of the beginnings of different novels, to see what suits your taste, this site (among others) seems to have all of his works available online.
My personal favorites are the depressing-as-hell Little Dorritt and The Old Curiosity Shop, but I think I am unusal in my tastes—especially as I could not make it through the supposedly funny The Pickwick Papers, which everyone else seems to love.
I vote for Great Expectations, which has a reasonably tight plot (for Dickens, that is), characters who aren’t cloyingly saintly, and one of the most gripping opening sequences in English literature. As a bonus, it contains a hilarious description of the Worst-Ever Performance of Hamlet.
I have to say… and I have heard many English majors agree… his best novel was his last, Our Mutual Friend. It is a 900-page monster and some of the “society” chapters are positively disorienting, but… WOW!
David Copperfield was my second favorite.
The others need to be read several times before their full brilliance dawns upon one. In my experience.
I’ll add another vote for Great Expectations. Something else to consider – rumor has it that Masterpiece Theatre is picking up a long BBC serialized version of Bleak House to be aired on PBS soon. I always love to see a dramatization of a book I’ve just read.
I’ll disagree with A Tale of Too Cities: it’s not the most representative/typical of Dickens’ novels, so it’s not the best place to start to see whether Dickens is your cup of tea.
The first Dickens novel I read was Oliver Twist, when we had to read it in Freshman (HS) English. I enjoyed it. It’s probably one of his easiest novels to read: relatively short and plot-driven.
David Copperfield and Great Expectations are both decent choices. Great Expectations is considered to be among Dickens’s best and it’s not too long; Copperfield was IIRC Dickens’s own personal favorite.
And yes, if you really want to start with something short, A Christmas Carol is worth reading, and since you probably already know the plot, you can sit back and enjoy Dickens’s writing.
And check out The Friendly Charles Dickens.
I second that. Bleak House was far from the first Dickens I read but was the first I actually enjoyed. I’ve since read and reread most of his books, the only tow i didlike now are the aforementioned Hard Times and **Dombey and Son ** because Florence Dombey is such a wet goose.
**tow i didlike ** will this be the straw that makes me learn to preview? Two I dislike
If you find you have a taste for Dickens after you’ve downed a few, you may also want to consider a sort of companion book called What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist–The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England. Between this and Thudlow Boink’s suggestion about The Friendly Charles Dickens, you should be all set.
I was forced to read Dickens in high school, and I didn’t like it one bit. I suspect this was because I had no sense of historical context, so significant details failed to compute: why Miss Havisham would be getting married at 9 o’clock in the first place, for instance, or what debtor’s prison was all about. I certainly appreciate him on many more levels now that I’ve developed a healthy interest in history.
I have a love/hate relationship with Dickens…
I would recommend Oliver Twist to begin with. David Copperfield and Great Expectations are also good.
I could not get into The Pickwick Papers , Bleak House or A Tale of Two Cities .
Read Jane Eyre, then read Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair, then read Dickens’s Great Expectations, then read Fforde’s Lost in a Good Book.
You’ll read two great classics of English literature, plus two enormously fun books chock full of references to same! It doesn’t get better than that.
Or, well, I could stop pushing Brontë and Fforde and actually answer the OP and suggest you start with Great Expectations, which I think is the most accessible Dickens novel, as well as being, in my opinion, his best.
Well, Pickwick was his first novel, and he was still sorta finding his way. It doesn’t really get good until the entrance of Sam Weller, one or two hundred pages in.
Well, thanks all for the suggestions. It looks like Great Expectations seem to be the consensus choice so I will go and grab a copy today.
And thank you for sharing! 
I think it’s a shame that American school childrena re forced to read Dickens’ books featuring children (or characters who are children at the beginning of the book) because of some confused idea that books about kids are appropriate for kids. They develop a life-long loathing of Dickens that’s tough to break. I have a friend who’s a freshman English teacher and loathes teaching Great Expectations, although he has to, because the kids hate it. Hell, I had to read it in high school and hated it. Then I read it in college and realized how hilariously funny it is.
So I thought I’d dig David Copperfield. Wrong answer. I do like it quite better now with the Jasper Fforde idea that David murdered Dear Little Dora in favor of Sweet Lucid Agnes. 
And while I love Eve, I’ve gotta warn you, books like Little Dorrit and The Olde Curiosity Shop didn’t age well, IMHO.