3 Review(s)

Regarded as one of the author's finest and most ambitious works, Bleak House all but overflows with the imaginative inventiveness unique to Dickens as it holds the reader fast to his most involved and involving plot. First published in 1853, Bleak House is a Victorian epic with a court case of fiendish difficulty at its center. The legal system's inability to resolve a will effects the lives of a broad swath of interconnected characters, revealing secrets and drawing out emotions ranging from selfless love to murderous hatred. The author mercilessly satirizes British law of his era while playing out a masterful chain of linked sub-plots. Esther Summerson, the only female narrator the author ever employed, is accompanied by a cavalcade of vivid, living characters as the story sweeps across Victorian society. Comic moments blend with tragic turns, hidden motives and relations come to light, and murder is committed before the question of inheritance is resolved. Arguably a proto-legal thriller and containing a genuine murder mystery, Bleak House is much more than that, and, in truth, much more than most any novel of its era. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Bleak House is both modern and readable.