Bleak House

Bleak House opens in the twilight of foggy London where fog grips the city most densely in the Court of Chancery. 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 in its atmosphere symbolism and magnificent bleak comedy is often regarded as the best of Dickens. A ‘great Victorian novel’ it is so inventive in its competing plots and styles that it eludes interpretation.