Book description
Penguin Classics e-books give you the best possible editions of
Charles Dickens's novels, including all the original illustrations,
useful and informative introductions, the definitive, accurate text as
it was meant to be published, a chronology of Dickens's life and notes
that fill in the background to the book.
To Paul Dombey, business is all and money can do anything. He runs
his family life as he runs his firm: coldly, calculatingly and
commercially. The only person he cares for is his little son, while
his motherless daughter Florence craves affection from her unloving
father, who sees her only as a 'base coin that couldn't be invested'.
As Dombey's callousness extends to others - from his defiant second
wife Edith to Florence's admirer Walter Gay - he sows the seeds of his
own destruction. Can this heartless businessman be redeemed? A
compelling depiction of a man imprisoned by his own pride, Dombey
and Son (1848) explores the devastating effects of emotional
deprivation on a dysfunctional family and on society as a whole.
Charles Dickens (1812-70) was a political reporter and journalist
before establishing his reputation as a novelist with PICKWICK PAPERS
(1836-7). His novels captured and held the public imagination over a
period of more than thirty years.
AndrewSanders is Professor of English at the University of Durham.
He has edited several Dickens novels and is the author of Charles
Dickens: Resurrectionist (1982) and The Short Oxford History of
English Literature (2000).
