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Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - -between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It is a mystery story, in which Esther Summerson discovers the truth about her birth and her unknown mother's tragic life. It is a murder story, which comes to a climax in a thrilling chase, led by one of the earliest detectives in English fiction, Inspector Bucket. And it is a fable about redemption, in which a bleak house is transformed by the resilience of human love. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Considered by many readers, including Shaw, Chesterton, Conrad and Trilling, as one of Dickens's finest achievements, Bleak House tells the complex story of a notorious lawsuit in which love and inheritance are set against the classic urban background of nineteenth-century London, where fog on the river, seeping into the very bones of the characters, symbolizes the pervasive corruption of the legal system and the society which supports it. Displaying the writer's familiar panoramic sweep and enormous cast of brilliant characters, the novel is also a bold experimental narrative in which public and private worlds are brought into sharp focus. It was first published in monthly parts, 1852-3, accompanied by the illustrations by 'Phiz' reproduced in this volume. This edition also reprints the original Everyman preface by G. K. Chesterton.

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper. A savage, but often comic, indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, Bleak House is one of Dickens's most ambitious novels, with a range that extends from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the poorest of London slums.

'Perhaps his best novel ... when Dickens wrote Bleak House he had grown up' G. K. ChestertonAs the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada Clare and Richard Carstone, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, a destitute crossing-sweeper. A savage indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, Bleak House is one of Dickens's most ambitious novels, with a range that extends from the drawing-rooms of the aristocracy to the London slums.Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Nicola Bradbury with a Preface by Terry Eagleton

Study of the genesis of the novel is facilitated by the reproduction of Dickens’ working plans and, for the first time, by some thousands of meticulous textual notes."Backgrounds" offers all of Dickens’ correspondence about Bleak House as well as contextual materials that document the Victorian controversy over pollution, a theme central to the novel, and present contemporary attitudes toward the government, the courts, and the police, to enhance the setting of the story.Also featured are several hundred annotations which fully elucidate for today’s readers the allusions and topical references in this remarkably allusive Victorian masterpiece.Especially helpful is a clear exposition of the nature of law procedures in the Court of Chancery, which is crucial to an understanding of the central action of the story."Critical essays" reprinted here include interpretations by G. K. Chesterton, J. Hillis Miller, George Ford, A. O. J. Cockshut, W. J. Harvey, H. M. Daleski, and Ian Ousby.

With its sustained social criticism and complex construction, Charles Dickens's Bleak House (1853) is considered by many critics to be Dickens's most remarkable novel. Janice Allan:introduces the contextual issues that most directly influenced Dickens's writing and reprints relevant source documentsprovides a comprehensive survey of the criticism of Bleak House from publication to the present, then introduces, reprints and annotates extracts from significant critical textsdiscusses key passages of the text, which are reprinted and fully annotated for ease of useincludes cross-references throughout, making illuminating connections between the text, contexts and interpretations of the novelconcludes the volume with suggestions to further reading, enabling additional focused studyBoth accessible and informative, Janice Allan provides an invaluable guide to one of the nineteenth century's most important and frequently studied novels.

With its sustained social criticism and complex construction, Charles Dickens's Bleak House (1853) is considered by many critics to be Dickens's most remarkable novel. Janice Allan:introduces the contextual issues that most directly influenced Dickens's writing and reprints relevant source documentsprovides a comprehensive survey of the criticism of Bleak House from publication to the present, then introduces, reprints and annotates extracts from significant critical textsdiscusses key passages of the text, which are reprinted and fully annotated for ease of useincludes cross-references throughout, making illuminating connections between the text, contexts and interpretations of the novelconcludes the volume with suggestions to further reading, enabling additional focused studyBoth accessible and informative, Janice Allan provides an invaluable guide to one of the nineteenth century's most important and frequently studied novels.

Graham Storey explores Dickens's vital engagement with some of the most intractable social and political issues of his day, and shows how these are reflected in the plot and characterization of Bleak House. In his detailed analysis of the novel's principal themes and unique structure, he shows why it occupies a pivotal position in Dickens's career. He also assesses the surprisingly varied reception this great novel has had, and places it in the context of European literature as a whole.

Key Features: Study methods Introduction to the text Summaries with critical notes Themes and techniques Textual analysis of key passages Author biography Historical and literary background Modern and historical critical approaches Chronology Glossary of literary terms

Supposing ""Bleak House"" is an extended meditation on what many consider to be Dickens’s and nineteenth-century England’s greatest work of narrative fiction. Focusing on the novel’s retrospective narrator, whom he identifies as Esther Woodcourt in order to distinguish her from her younger, unmarried self, John Jordan offers provocative new readings of the novel’s narrative structure, its illustrations, its multiple and indeterminate endings, the role of its famous detective, Inspector Bucket, its many ghosts, and its relation to key events in Dickens’s life during the years 1850 to 1853.Jordan draws on insights from narratology and psychoanalysis in order to explore multiple dimensions of Esther’s complex subjectivity and fractured narrative voice. His conclusion considers Bleak House as a national allegory, situating it in the context of the troubled decade of the 1840s and in relation to Dickens’s seldom-studied A Child’s History of England (written during the same years as his great novel) and to Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx. Supposing ""Bleak House"" claims Dickens as a powerful investigator of the unconscious mind and as a ""popular"" novelist deeply committed to social justice and a politics of inclusiveness.