Synopses & Reviews
One of Dickens's greatest works of social criticism,
Little Dorrit is a scathing indictment of mid-Victorian England which centers on the Marshalsea Prison and the Dorrit family who live there, against a background of government incompetence and financial scandal. Revelation and redemption haunt Dickens's portrayal of human relations as fundamentally distorted by class and money. The swindling financier Merdle, the bureaucratic nightmare of the Circumlocution Office, and a teeming cast of characters display the inadequacy of secular morality in the face of contemporary social and political confusion.
This edition uses the definitive Clarendon text and includes all forty-one original illustrations by Phiz. The volume boasts a new introduction by Dennis Walder, highlighting Dickens's move from social and political issues to more personal, even spiritual concerns while maintaining the wide scope of his mature fiction. Also included are an up-to-date bibliography and full chronology of the author's life and times, an appendix which reproduces Dickens's number plans for the novel, substantially revised and updated notes, and a map of London.
Mixing humor and pathos, irony and satire, Little Dorrit reveals a master of fiction in top form.
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Synopsis
'Clennam rose softly, opened and closed the door without a sound, and passed from the prison, carrying the quiet with him into the turbulent streets.'Introspective and dreamy, Arthur Clennam returns to England from many years abroad to find a people gripped in their self-made social and mental prisons. Against a background of government incompetence and financial scandal, he searches for the key to the affairs of the Dorrit family, prisoners for debt in the Marshalsea. He discovers through the seamstress Amy Dorrit the fulfilment of which he dreams, but only after he learns to understand his own heart. Revelation and redemption haunt Dickens's portrayal of human relations as fundamentally distorted by class and money. The swindling financier Merdle, the bureaucratic nightmare of the Circumlocution Office, and a teeming cast of characters display the inadequacy of secular morality in the face of contemporary social and political confusion. Mixing humour and pathos, irony and satire, Dickens's eleventh novel reveals a master of fiction in top form.
This new edition, based on the definitive Clarendon text, includes all of Phiz's original illustrations and a wide-ranging introduction highlighting Dickens's move to more personal and spiritual concerns.
About the Author
Harvey Peter Sucksmith edited the definitive critical edition of
Little Dorrit for the Clarendon Dickens, and a critical edition of Collins's
The Woman in White for Oxford English Novels.
Dennis Walder is an Emeritus Professor of Literature at the Open University. He is the author of Literature in the Modern World and, most recently, Postcolonial Nostalgias: Writing, Representation, and Memory. He was a judge for the Commonwealth Writers' prize, 2011.