the ninth novel by Charles Dickens; published in 20 monthly parts between March 1852 and September 1853. Dickens's assault on the flaws of the British judiciary system is based in part on his own experiences as a law clerk. His harsh characterization of the slow, arcane Chancery law process, helped to set the stage for its eventual reform in the 1870s.

One of Charles 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. In Bleak House, competing claims of love and inheritance—complicated by murder—have given rise to a costly and decades-long legal battle that one litigant refers to as “the family curse.” The insidious London fog that rises from the river Thames and seeps into the very bones of the characters symbolizes the pervasive corruption of the legal system and the society that supports it, targets of Dickens’s satirical wrath. Displaying Dickens’s familiar panoramic sweep and brilliant characters—including the mysterious orphan Esther Summerson, her gentle guardian John Jarndyce, the haughty Lady Dedlock, and the scheming lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn—the novel is also a bold experimental narrative that unforgettably dramatizes our most basic human conflicts.

Bleak HousebyCharles DickensBleak House is one of Charles Dickens's major novels, first published as a serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and the story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is the long-running legal case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which came about because someone wrote several conflicting wills.Sir Leicester Dedlock and his wife Lady Honoria live on his estate at Chesney Wold. Unknown to Sir Leicester, Lady Dedlock had a lover, Captain Hawdon, before she married - and had a daughter by him. Lady Dedlock believes her daughter is dead.The daughter, Esther, is in fact alive, and being raised by Miss Barbary, Lady Dedlock's sister. Esther does not know Miss Barbary is her aunt. After Miss Barbary dies, John Jarndyce becomes Esther's guardian and assigns the Chancery lawyer "Conversation" Kenge to take charge of her future. After attending school for six years, Esther moves in with him at Bleak House.

The law courts prevailing over the case of Jarndyce & Jarndyce are overwhelming in their pedantic, futile red-tape bureaucratic adherence to old principles and are partly based on Dickens' time as a young law clerk. With a massive cast of characters--many with ingeniously comic names--and his most complex plot, Bleak House is believed by many to be Dickens' greatest work. This is a free digital copy of a book that has been carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. To make this print edition available as an ebook, we have extracted the text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology and submitted it to a review process to ensure its accuracy and legibility across different screen sizes and devices. Google is proud to partner with libraries to make this book available to readers everywhere.

Bleak House is one of Charles Dickens's major novels, first published as a serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and the story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is the long-running legal case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which came about because someone wrote several conflicting wills. This legal case is used by Dickens to satirise the English judicial system, and he makes use of his earlier experiences as a law clerk, and as a litigant seeking to enforce copyright on his earlier books. Though the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, this novel helped support a judicial reform movement, which culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s. There is some debate among scholars as to when Bleak House is set. The English legal historian Sir William Holdsworth sets the action in 1827] however, reference to preparation for the building of a railway in Chapter LV suggests the 1830s.

the ninth novel by Charles Dickens; published in 20 monthly parts between March 1852 and September 1853. Dickens's assault on the flaws of the British judiciary system is based in part on his own experiences as a law clerk. His harsh characterization of the slow, arcane Chancery law process, helped to set the stage for its eventual reform in the 1870s.

First published in the year 1853, the present novel 'Bleak House' is one of Charles Dickens's major works. The story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which came about because someone wrote several conflicting wills. Dickens uses this case to satirise the English judicial system, and he makes use of his earlier experiences as a law clerk and as a litigant seeking to enforce copyright on his earlier books.

This book, first published in 1988, is the most comprehensive annotation of Bleak House ever undertaken. It provides authoritative background information about the topical issues of the novel that interested Dickens as a social critic and activist. It also describes the novel’s literary antecedents and identifies the sources of its hundreds of literary and historical allusions. The annotation is based on a wide range of nineteenth-century sources – from newspapers, periodicals and parliamentary papers to travel guides and cookery books – and gives the modern reader unprecedented access to both Bleak House – Dickens’s tract for the times – and the period when it was written.

Charles John Huffam Dickens ( 7 February 1812

Bleak House was first published as a serial between March 1852 and September 1853, and it is one of Charles Dickens's major novels. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and the story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is the long-running legal case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which came about because someone wrote several conflicting wills. This legal case is used by Dickens to satirize the English judicial system, and he makes use of his earlier experiences as a law clerk, and as a litigant seeking to enforce copyright on his earlier books. Though the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, this novel helped support a judicial reform movement, which culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s. There is some debate among scholars as to when Bleak House is set. The English legal historian Sir William Holdsworth sets the action in 1827; however, reference to preparation for the building of a railroad in Chapter LV suggests the 1830s.