Description

A mysterious lawsuit, a dark secret, a framed murder, and an illegitimate child: these are the themes of Charles Dickens’ suspenseful, intricate book. The narrator and heroine, Esther Summerson, is a downtrodden young woman with no family who is taken in by John Jarndyce after her first guardian dies. Esther quickly befriends Jarndyce’s two other wards, cousins Richard Carstone and Ada Clare, who are in love. Before they marry, though, Richard must choose a profession, which is difficult since he spends all of time following a long-standing legal dispute. Esther, meanwhile, has her own concerns, as she slowly begins to learn the truth about her past. The secret of her ancestry is revealed to her when she learns that her mother is Lady Dedlock, but she is forbidden to have contact with her. Events then take a dark turn: Lady Dedlock’s desperation to guard her reputation leads to a shocking murder; and Esther’s burdens mount when she realizes that Richard, in his obsession with the legal case, has lost all of his money and his health. In Bleak House, Dickens weaves a masterful tale of loss and love, crafting a narrative in which all characters affect each other’s lives, however subtly.

About the Author

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was uniquely successful as a writer during his lifetime, enjoying huge followings from readers and audiences in England and America. When, early in life, sudden misfortune sent his family into extreme poverty, the young Charles was sent to work in a factory. Never forgetting this childhood misery, Dickens wrote often in later life about the plights of the working poor. As a young man he became a law clerk and stenographer, moving into journalism in the 1830s. Dickens's early journalistic sketches formed the basis for his first literary works. With the 1836 serialized publication of The Pickwick Papers, his unparalleled success as an author began. Dickens went on to write such famous novels as David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Barnaby Rudge, Hard Times, and Bleak House, with all of his works remaining in print to this day.

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Opening Lines (Experimental)

A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge's eye had a cast in my ...