Synopses & Reviews
The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. Jarndyce and Jardyce 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 neighbors 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. This highly critical look at the flaws of the British judiciary system contains the illustrations by Phiz that are found in the original editions.
Synopsis
Penguin presents the companion book to the "Masterpiece Theatre" miniseries starring Gillian Anderson (T"he House of Mirth, The X-Files"). This stunning production features a screenplay written by Andrew Davies ("Bridget Jones's Diary"). Part romance, part melodrama, part detective story, the novel spreads out among a web of relationships in every level of society.
About the Author
Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsea, England. He died in Kent on June 9, 1870. The second of eight children of a family continually plagued by debt, the young Dickens came to know not only hunger and privation,but also the horror of the infamous debtors' prison and the evils of child labor. A turn of fortune in the shape of a legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and "slave" factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years' formal schooling at Wellington House Academy. He worked as an attorney's clerk and newspaper reporter until his Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life. In later years, the pressure of serial writing, editorial duties, lectures, and social commitments led to his separation from Catherine Hogarth after twenty-three years of marriage. It also hastened his death at the age of fifty-eight, when he was characteristically engaged in a multitude of work.