Companion to 'Bleak House'

<p>This book first published in 1988 is the most comprehensive annotation of <i>Bleak House</i> ever undertaken. It provides authoritative background information about the topical issues of the novel that interested Dickens as a social critic and activist. It also describes the novel’s literary antecedents and identifies the sources of its hundreds of literary and historical allusions. The annotation is based on a wide range of nineteenth-century sources – from newspapers periodicals and parliamentary papers to travel guides and cookery books – and gives the modern reader unprecedented access to both <i>Bleak House</i> – Dickens’s tract for the times – and the period when it was written.</p>