‘Bleak House’ — first serialized from 1852-53 and then published as a full novel in 1853 — is one of Charles Dickens’ most acclaimed novels.
Both a brilliant novel filled with intrigue, fascinating characters and high drama and also a scathing satire of the British Chancery court system, ‘Bleak House’ charts the lives of three young wards of John Jarndyce: Esther Summerson, Richard Carstone and Ada Clare. Richard and Ada are cousins and figure among the potential beneficiaries of a contested will, which has been making its way through the Chancery court for decades in a case known as Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
When Esther and Richard fall in love, Richard is encouraged to seek a profession and to avoid getting involved in the court case, which has been known to consume the lives of anyone who falls under its spell. But when Richard is inexorably drawn to try and bring the case to its conclusion, Ada and Esther do everything they can to save him from his own obsession before Jarndyce and Jarndyce destroys his life.
‘Bleak House’ proved to be such a powerful and influential novel when it was first published that the British legal system enacted several legal reforms in direct response to the novels condemnation of the system. It has since gone on to become a literary classic and has been adapted several times to the screen. The novel is presented here in its original and unabridged format.
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Charles Dickens was born February 7, 1812 in Landport, Portsmouth, the second of eight children to John and Elizabeth Dickens. Dickens’ father had great difficulty managing his affairs and was often under the burden of crushing debt, which culminated in his imprisonment in Marshalsea debtor’s prison in 1824. As a result, Dickens was forced to leave school and begin work at a boot-blacking factory to assist in getting the family out of debt, an experience that would allow Dickens to sympathize with the plight of the poor and destitute that would last his entire life. Dickens took to writing immediately and, in 1833, he published his first story: A Dinner at Popular Walk in Monthly Magazine. The following year, he began writing under the pseudonym Boz and released a collection of short stories entitled Sketches by Boz in 1836. That same year he married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of the editor of the Evening Chronicle. They had 10 children before they separated in 1858. From 1836 to 1837, Dickens serialized what would become the novel The Pickwick Papers, which was an immediate sensation and became one of his most popular works, released in book form in 1837. Encouraged by this success, Dickens began writing at a furious and astonishing rate, producing (in serial form) some of his most favorite novels: Oliver Twist (1837-39), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), as well as The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge (1840-41). After that, Dickens barely paused for the rest of his career. He would regularly release a book ever year or so for the next two decades, including American Notes, his five Christmas Books (including, of course, A Christmas Carol), David Copperfield, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. Charles Dickens suffered a stroke on June 9, 1870 at died at Gad’s Hill. Buried in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey.
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