It's these non-criminal, inheritance sort of spats that absorb costs to help lawyers feather their nests, but merely break the hearts of the clients concerned and send them bankrupt. The problem is, decisions are so prolonged that successive generations inherit all the angst. It means he obviously had it all planned in his head before Issue 1 hit the newsstands.ĭickens' major gripe in this novel is the frustration of court cases that drag on forever, driving some people to put their lives on hold while waiting for a verdict that may have the potential to change everything. He pulls so many divergent threads together, which puts me in awe of his genius when I consider that his long novels were originally published as magazine serials.

Here is my choice for a Classic with a Place Name in the Title in the 2020 Back to the Classics Challenge. It's always a pleasure to return to Dickens' London, where fog and mud reign supreme and we know that whenever any character bobs to the surface we're bound to see them again later, possibly under surprising circumstances. A 'great Victorian novel', it is so inventive in its competing plots and styles that it eludes interpretation. Bleak House, in its atmosphere, symbolism and magnificent bleak comedy, is often regarded as the best of Dickens. The obscure case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, in which an inheritance is gradually devoured by legal costs, the romance of Esther Summerson and the secrets of her origin, the sleuthing of Detective Inspector Bucket and the fate of Jo the crossing-sweeper, these are some of the lives Dickens invokes to portray London society, rich and poor, as no other novelist has done. Bleak House opens in the twilight of foggy London, where fog grips the city most densely in the Court of Chancery.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens