"Bleak House" (1853) by Charles Dickens

A blockbuster of a book [1], with what was for Dickens a big theme: the incredibly antiquated and abstruse, bureaucratic procedures involved in property legislation via the time-hallowed Chancery Law courts – that however at the time of its publication had already been essentially abolished.

Today the very lengthy satire about the inefficiencies of that antiquated system has lost much of its sting and one can easily find the subject overworked, although it cannot be denied that as a symbol for monstrous bureaucracies — that have not by any means all disappeared even in our enlightened age — it is by no means irrelevant.

This is mature Dickens writing as best as he can, which is very good indeed, so his trademark vignettes of life and sparkling minor characters are all there, the plot is solid, the anti-heroes are as brilliantly portrayed as ever and as an added point of interest the novel features a remarkably efficient Inspector Bucket, one of the first police detectives to ever feature prominently in a novel, as far as we know.

Bleak House was first published in 20 monthly instalments, each containing 32 pages of text and two illustrations by Phiz, between March 1852 and September 1853. The 40 illustrations by Phiz, among the finest of all his contributions to Dickens’s works, are all included here.

An e-book, with all of the illustrations, is available for downloading below.

Bleak House (e-book)