Bleak House

Considered by some critics to be the author's best work, Bleak House is the story of several generations of the Jarndyce family who wait in vain to inherit money from a disputed fortune in the settlement of the lawsuit of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.

The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature: Novel by Charles Dickens, published serially in 1852-53 and in book form in 1853. Considered by some critics to be the author's best work, Bleak House is the story of several generations of the Jarndyce family who wait in vain to inherit money from a disputed fortune in the settlement of the lawsuit of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. It is pointedly critical of England's Court of Chancery, in which cases could drag on through decades of convoluted legal maneuvering.

Ingram: An intricate blend of serious social commentary and novelistic virtuosity, Bleak Housepart romance, part melodrama, and part detective storyis often regarded as Dickens' best book. Its comic vignettes, convoluted intrigues, and fortuitous coincidences are played out by a cast of characters as idiosyncratic and memorable as any Dickens ever created.

From the Back Cover: Bleak House open in the twilight of foggy London, where fog grips the city most densely in the Court of Chancery.

The obscure case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, in which an inheritance is gradually devoured by legal costs, the romance of Ester Summerson and the secrets of her origin, the sleuthing of Detective Inspector Bucket and the fate of Jo the crossing-sweeper, these aer some of the lives Dickens invokes to portray London society, rich and poor, as no other novelist has done.

Bleak House, in its atmosphere, symbolism and magnificent bleak comedy, is often regarded as the best of Dickens. A 'great Victorian novel', it is so inventive in its competing plots and styles that it eludes interpretation. As Nicola Bradbury remarks in her Introduction to this new edition, "Interwoven plots investigate the secrets of the past; of parentage, lost documents, whodunnit; but the real issue in the work is survival, the value of life going on."