- Published: 1 September 2010
- ISBN: 9781407015064
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 992
Bleak House
'Perhaps Bleak House is his best novel... When Dickens wrote Bleak House he had grown up' G. K. Chesterton
'Dickens's chilling tale of murder and betrayal' Sunday Times
'The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself'
'Jarndyce and Jardyce' is an infamous lawsuit that has been in process for generations. Nobody can remember exactly how the case started but many different individuals have found their fortunes caught up in it. Esther Summerson watches as her friends and neighbours are consumed by their hopes and disappointments with the proceedings. But while the intricate puzzles of the lawsuit are being debated by lawyers, other more dramatic mysteries are unfolding that involve heartbreak, lost children, blackmail and murder.
- Published: 1 September 2010
- ISBN: 9781407015064
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 992
Other books in the series
About the author
Charles Dickens was born in Hampshire on February 7, 1812. His father was a clerk in the navy pay office, who was well paid but often ended up in financial troubles. When Dickens was twelve years old he was send to work in a shoe polish factory because his family had been taken to the debtors' prison. His career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays began to appear in periodicals. The Pickwick Papers, his first commercial success, was published in 1836. The serialisation of Oliver Twist began in 1837. Many other novels followed and The Old Curiosity Shop brought Dickens international fame and he became a celebrity in America as well as Britain. Charles Dickens died on 9 June 1870. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
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Praise for Bleak House
Bleak House is the literati's favourite Dickens. It's one of the few stories that has modern resonance: the tale of a never-ending court case can be seen -if you squint -as the precursor of Kafka and Orwell
A.A. Gill
Bleak House reads like an encyclopedia not only of its time and place but of us
Elizabeth Kostova
Dickens has genius to vivify his observation
Spectator
Dickens is huge - like the sky. Pick any page of Dickens and it's immediately recognizable as him, yet he might be doing social satire, or farce, or horror, or a psychological study of a murderer - or any combination of these
Susannah Clarke
Dickens's chilling tale of murder and betrayal
Sunday Times
He deals truly with human nature, which never can degrade; he takes up everything, good, bad, or indifferent, which he works up into a rich alluvial deposit.He is natural, and that never can be ridiculous
Quarterly Review
I keep on reading it in order to discover how to write a novel
John Mortimer
In addition to the usual range of Dickensian characters, scathing social observations and the first detective in British fiction, Bleak House features a murder, a frame-up for that murder, a child's tragic death, a character who dies by spontaneous combustion, a young beauty who loses her looks after catching smallpox, an opium addict and a secret love affair that produced an illegitimate child
Daily Mail
Kafka's favourite book, a tour de force that mixes grand scale and minutely-observed, perfectly-heard reality. Incomparable set-pieces (that opening! spontaneous combustion!) and dialogue
James Hawes