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Bleak House [Paperback]

Charles Dickens
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 1088 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; Television tie-in edition edition (6 Oct 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0141025263
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141025261
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 593,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Charles Dickens
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Product Description

Review

One of the most glorious achievements of publishing in our time --Daily Telegraph

It will never be more possible for a more complete and perfect edition to be put on the market --Arthur Waugh, Past President, Dickens Fellowship

It will never be more possible for a more complete and perfect edition to be put on the market --Arthur Waugh, Past President, Dickens Fellowship --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Book Description

With an exclusive introduction by Peter Ackroyd, these out of print editions are brought back to life with a fresh and timeless new look. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Inside This Book (Learn More)
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
101 of 102 people found the following review helpful
By Budge Burgess TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
"Bleak House" opens with an astonishingly atmospheric description of a London fog … an imagery which has come to dominate our vision of 19th century London. Think how many films and television productions use this image! But fog, for Dickens, is not just a meteorological phenomena - it describes much of human life, particularly the actions and inactions of the law and lawyers which form the backbone to this novel. At the heart is the court case of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce, a family squabble which has dragged on for decades and kept many a lawyer in employment. Dickens slowly unravels this mystery for us.

'Bleak House' has a huge cast of characters and its plot is as extensive and complex as the London Underground system. It also employs a double narrative - one of the characters, Esther, acts as narrator and comments on the personal and emotional world of its characters, while an unnamed, third person narrator comments on the social and economic ills of the era. We get, therefore, a paralleling of the individual and the social. The Court of Chancery and the aristocracy are presented as a social fog - deadening, confusing, misleading, a blight on the world. Dynamism comes from the individual's emotions, hopes and fears.

While the impersonal narrator writes in the present tense and comments ironically on corruption, greed, abuses of power, and the plethora of social ills Dickens exposes and satirises in this work, Esther's account is written in the past tense, a diary reflecting on her life with optimism and hope. Dickens thus gives his reader a sense of the triumph of the individual - a comparatively lowly young woman - over the dead hand of an archaic, oppressive social system.

Esther is an orphan who seeks to discover her real identity and learn who she is - a major theme in the book is the abdication of parental and familial responsibility. She feels a sense of purpose in life - unlike the philanthropists Dickens exposes, who rush around interfering in the lives of the poor and destitute, oblivious to the unhappiness and misery of their own families. Esther genuinely cares about others - it is no fashionable pretence. Dickens emphasises the social nature of life - no one is alone or apart from society, all its peoples and institutions are interconnected. 'Bleak House', therefore, becomes a metaphor for the complexities of life and society.

In terms of the sophistication and complexity of its plot and style, 'Bleak House' can be seen as Dickens masterpiece - though less well known than other works. It is written in an astonishingly visual style - from the opening fog, Dickens doesn't obscure his world, he lays it open as moving tableaux. At times the writing can be a trifle dense and overly precise for modern tastes, but this is a master of language at work. Dickens draws his characters with deceptive ease. He ruthlessly exposes their flaws and foibles, yet reserves a tender affection for them.

It's a brilliantly written, brilliantly worked, vast world of a novel. Complex - no idle read this, you will need to concentrate to remember who the many characters are and what they are up to. A very visual, very socially concerned, very dynamic book, if you can get into Dickens's style it's likely that this will be one you'll want to read again. Indeed, it may be a book you have to read twice to appreciate its depth. Now revitalised by an epic BBC production, a viewing of the novel as television drama may be a stimulus for many to read the book. It is an extraordinary read and one to be commended to anyone with a love of language or fascination with Victoriana … or who simply loves a great tale, told by a master.

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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
The greatest novel by the greatest novelist England has ever produced, and in my opinion, the greatest novel in the language. That is how highly I regard this novel.

Bleak House is a giant book by any measure, physical or literary, triumphantly covering so much ground that it successfully paints a multi-faceted, multi-layered portrait of the whole culture and society of the Victorian Age in Britain. Bleak House is a savage satire upon the class system, the law, politics, and public morality. At the same time it is a wonderful crime novel of murder and detection, a love story, a comedy, and a piece of high Victorian melodrama. Yes, Bleak House is all these things and more.

In addition, the novel also displays Dickens' artistry as a writer of prose to the full. The famous first chapter alone - which consists almost entirely of a magnificent description of a foggy day in November - is a masterpiece of English prose. From there onwards the standard of writing never slips.

Dickens' is justly famous for the wonderful casts of characters he assembled for his novels and here again, Bleak House doesn't disappoint. It boasts a vast and interesting array of characters, especially Mr Jarndyce, Esther Summerson (the partial narrator and heroine of the book), Jo the crossing sweeper whose story will break your heart, the villainous Mr Tulkington, and the detective Inspector Bucket, one of the first detectives to appear in fiction.

I rate Bleak House as Dickens' most mature, supreme achievement as a writer. The satire is biting. The moral indignation at the injustices of the world is brave and honest. As a whole experience, no reader can afford not to read classics like Bleak House at least once. If you do miss out, you're only letting the finest things in life (reading life anyway) pass you by.

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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
If the tags of "classic" and "victorian" have given you the impression that Dickens is a stuffy old duffer, then please read this book. It will totally blow your preconceptions apart.
Dickens, it seems to me, was a genuine humanitarian and a rebel at heart. His contmept for the ruling classes, and his anger at the suffering of the poor would on their own make this a worthwhile read. But add to that his mastery of the language, and his comic genius, and you have here one of the most compelling stories ever written.
Occasionally his heroine, and some other characters, are so saintly you could scream. Similarly, his villains are so grotesquely despicable, you might think that the man had no grasp of human subtleties. But this is his style - he paints in broad brushstrokes. Reading Dickens is like listening to a tall tale spun by a master storyteller who can't help but exaggerate, so anxious is he that you can see what he sees.
With so many of the so-called "greats" of English literature, you need a classical education to understand the work. With Dickens, all one needs is a love of stories, of laughter and of language. And if you have a healthy contempt of the rich and powerful, then all the better.
Since we are still ruled over by pompous lawyers, I recommend this as a novel which maintains its relevance and its wit.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
downloads for kindle
Well as this "Classic" is so easy to download and at a price even the lower income families can afford,there should be no excuse for not reading a classic like this,a truly good... Read more
Published 1 day ago by Mr. J. Moran
Nice item
Nice little hardback, beautiful engravings( pictures) throughout. Gold leaf on page ends and red ribbon marker... Half way through. Read more
Published 1 month ago by M. C. Smith
Great book, irritatingly presented
I'm not about to provide a critique on one of Dickens' finest works, but note that the Kindle edition has been poorly prepared. Read more
Published 1 month ago by J. Marriage
HOUSE FULL OF STORIES AND KNICK-KNACKS
I am not quite halfway through the novel - probably the longest written by the masterly pen of Charles Dickens - but I am in it for the long haul. Read more
Published 2 months ago by SCRIVO
A House Less Bleak
Bleak House is of course a masterwork - prose of ingenuity, humour and frankly genius. Anyone who has not tried a Dickens' novel should hang their head in shame and buy one... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Mark Towner
Brilliant
Having not read any Dickens novels in the past ten years, but having fond memories of those that I had read in the past, it was with some trepidation that I started reading Bleak... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mephistopheles
Lovely format, great collection!
I have several of the Collectors Library books, and love how they look and feel. I also like the small chunky size. Read more
Published 4 months ago by SuzyB
Poor quality printing
This refers to the Nonesuch hardback edition. On roughly 5% of pages, the printing becomes increasingly compressed as it nears the gutter. Read more
Published 5 months ago by John Mcfarland
One of the finest novels in English literature
It took me a long while (30 years since I first started reading books in English, if you care to know) before I got around to Dickens. But once I did, there was no stopping me. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Didier
Winter reading
I bought this because I have great admiration for anyone who can hold the interest of the reader for so long. Dickins is dead but what he has captured lives on. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Sheileen
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