Trade Paperback - New
One of Dickens's most critically admired novels, this story of a monumental and life-consuming court case features one of his most vast and varied casts of colorful characters.
Considered by many readers, including Shaw, Chesterton, Conrad, and Trilling, to be one of Dickens's finest achievements, Bleak House tells the complex story of a notorious lawsuit in which competing claims of love and inheritance are set against the classic urban background of nineteenth-century London. The insidious fog that rises from the river and seeps into the very bones of the characters symbolizes the pervasive corruption of the legal system and the society that supports it, a target of Dickens's satirical wrath. Displaying Dickens's familiar panoramic sweep and enormous cast of brilliant characters--including the mysterious orphan Esther Summerson, her gentle guardian John Jardyce, the haughty Lady Dedlock, and the scheming lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn--the novel is also a bold experimental narrative in which public and private worlds are brought into sharp focus.
