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by Charles Dickens
The complex story of a notorious law-suit in which love and inheritance are set against the classic urban background of 19th-century London, where fog on the river, seeping into the very bones of the characters, symbolizes the corruption of the legal system and the society which supports it.
"Jarndyce and Jarndyce" 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.
The fog and cold that permeate Bleak House mirror a Victorian England mired in spiritual insolvency. Dickens brought all his passion, brilliance, and narrative verve to this huge novel of lives entangled in a multi-generational lawsuit—and through it, he achieved, at age 41, a stature almost Shakespearean.
What are you reading this week? (6/12/2025)
Reading Murder in My Backyard/ Ann Cleeves and Bleak House/ Charles Dickens
-Paula_Walters
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This information about Bleak House was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812. He is the author of such Classics as Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol and David Copperfield. In later works, such as Bleak House and Little Dorrit, Dickens's social criticism became more radical and his comedy more savage. His last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was never completed and he died on 9 June 1870.
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