Book description
'Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits
and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the
tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and
dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights.
Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs...'
As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way
through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of
people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being
devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose
parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer
Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the
destitute little crossing-sweeper. A savage, but often comic,
indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, Bleak House
is one of Dickens's most ambitious novels, with a range that extends
from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the poorest of London slums.
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in
English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the
beginning of the First World War.
