Bleak House.

A lawsuit so old that no one alive remembers how it began grinds on through the London fog, devouring fortunes and hopes, while somewhere in the murk a secret waits that will link the highest lady in the land to the poorest child on the street.

What it's about

Bleak House turns on the interminable Chancery suit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce and the vast web of lives caught in its orbit. Narrated in part by the gentle Esther Summerson and in part by an all-seeing eye, it follows wards of court, a benevolent guardian, a proud aristocratic couple with a buried past, a relentless lawyer and a doomed crossing-sweeper, weaving mystery, romance and social panorama into a single immense design.

Themes

Dickens mounts a furious attack on the delays and cruelties of the legal system and on institutional indifference generally. He explores inherited guilt and secret shame, poverty and disease that respect no class boundary, and the responsibilities the fortunate owe the destitute, all shrouded in the fog that opens the book as its governing image.

Why it still matters

Widely regarded as Dickens's greatest achievement, Bleak House fuses detective mystery, social criticism and sheer storytelling power on an epic scale. Its rage at a self-serving legal machinery and its vision of a society bound together by hidden connections remain startlingly modern.

Who it's for

For readers ready to commit to Dickens at full stretch, for lovers of intricate plots and vivid casts, and for anyone who wants a Victorian novel that is at once a mystery, a satire and a moral epic.

Sources and references

Verified references for this edition: Open Library, WorldCat, Charles Dickens on Wikipedia.