Bleak House

Bleak House by Charles Dickens The complex story of a
notorious law-suit in which love and inheritance are set
against the classic urban background of 19th-century
London where fog on the river seeping into the very bones
of the characters symbolizes the corruption of the legal
system and the society which supports it. “Jarndyce and
Jarndyce” is an infamous lawsuit that has been in process
for generations. Nobody can remember exactly how the case
started but many different individuals have found their
fortunes caught up in it. Esther Summerson watches as her
friends and neighbours are consumed by their hopes and
disappointments with the proceedings. But while the
intricate puzzles of the lawsuit are being debated by
lawyers other more dramatic mysteries are unfolding that
involve heartbreak lost children blackmail and murder. The
fog and cold that permeate Bleak House mirror a Victorian
England mired in spiritual insolvency. Dickens brought all
his passion brilliance and narrative verve to this huge
novel of lives entangled in a multi-generational
lawsuit—and through it he achieved at age 41 a stature
almost Shakespearean.