num_pages: 1088
description: Bleak House opens in the twilight of foggy London, where fog grips the city most densely in the Court of Chancery. The obscure case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, in which an inheritance is gradually devoured by legal costs, the romance of Esther Summerson and the secrets of her origin, the sleuthing of Detective Inspector Bucket and the fate of Jo the crossing-sweeper, these are some of the lives Dickens invokes to portray London society, rich and poor, as no other novelist has done. Bleak House, in its atmosphere, symbolism and magnificent bleak comedy, is often regarded as the best of Dickens. A 'great Victorian novel', it is so inventive in its competing plots and styles that it eludes interpretation. ‘Perhaps his best novel … when Dickens wrote Bleak House he had grown up’ G. K. Chesterton‘One of the finest of all English satires’ Terry Eagleton
language: English
title: Bleak House
titlecomplete: Bleak House
characters: Ada Clare, Joshua Smallweed, Mr George, Lady Dedlock, Richard Carstone, William Guppy, Caroline Jellyby, Mr Tulkinghorn, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Mr Snagsby, Mr Bucket, Charlotte Neckett, Esther Summerson, Jo, John Jarndyce, Harold Skimpole, Allan Woodcourt
genres: Literature, Classics, Novels, Classic Literature, Victorian, 19th Century, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Mystery, British Literature
ratings_count: 107004
places: England
publisher: Penguin Classics