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Bleak House

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Bleak House
Type
Novel
Language
English
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Wikipedia

Bleak House is a novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between 12 March 1852 and 12 September 1853. The novel has many characters and several subplots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills. In a preface to the 1853 first edition, Dickens said there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably Thellusson v Woodford, in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, Bleak House helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.

Some scholars debate when Bleak House is set. The English legal historian Sir William Holdsworth sets the action in 1827; however, reference to preparation for the building of a railway in Chapter LV suggests the 1830s.

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Annotation

Novel first serialised in twenty parts from March 1852 to September 1853, and published in book form in 1853.

Last modified: 2020-11-10 (revision #41202)

Editions

NameFormatISBNRelease Date
Bleak HouseeBook?2017-11-05
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Identifiers

LibraryThing Work
21009928
OpenLibrary Work ID
OL14868510W
Wikidata Work ID
Q883305

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Last Modified
2023-01-21