Bleak House
CHARLES DICKENS
With an Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, University of Kent at Canterbury
Bleak House is one of Dickens's finest achievements, establishing his reputation as a serious and mature novelist, as well as a brilliant comie writer. It is at once a complex story that fully engages the reader in the work of detection, and an unforgettable indictment of an indifferent society. Its representations of a great city's dark underworld, and of the law's corruption and delay, draw upon the author's personal knowledge and experience. But it is his symbolie art that projects these things in a vision that embraces black comedy, cosmic farce, and tragic ruin.
In a unique creative experiment, Dickens divides the narrative between his hero…