Little Dorrit

By Charles Dickens

Book Overview

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.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199596484
• ISBN13: 9780199596485
• Release Date: July 2012
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 912 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 5.1" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7

Customer Reviews

Great old time classic book

I like most of Charles Dickens works. Many of them were required reading for me in high school back in the 60's. I'm building a small collection of them now because sometimes after many years have passed you tend to forget some things you read years ago even though you may have really enjoyed the book. I like books from different eras in time because they give you insight as to how people thought and felt during that period.

Worth a Journey

Among the reasons to come to earth must surely be the chance to read this novel. Shaw called this novel a masterpiece among masterpieces. My opinion is that this novel is the greatest of the sixteen. It is less bland than Bleak House, more poignant than Copperfield. I started it desultorily, distracted greatly by events in my life. But gradually as I read it dawned on me that sentence by sentence Dickens was here at his most trenchant. I began to be charmed by the characters, some of the greatest in his oeuvre. For all the darkness in the conception--a girl born and raised in debtor's prison--Little Dorrit is a wonderful character. Arthur Clennam is a real man. I adore Flora's deranged speech and her tenderness. Fanny is a delight! And there are Doyce and Pancks--and the Meagles and Pet and Tattycoram--and there are so many secrets! And isn't Blandois the precursor of Fosco? Oh, I could go on. To the Circumlocution Office and Barnacles and Merdle - and Afferty and Flintwich and Mrs. Clennam--such a wonderful feast of characters--with the Marshallsea hovering over all. How well Dickens uses dialogue to identify character; how amusing are their tics. The characters fall into strata. The main of them, characterized by Clennam, Doyce, and Pancks, are at the level of small businessmen, tradesmen. Below them are the destitutes. A little above them are Mrs. Clennam, Casby, the Meagles. And high above them the Merdles, Gowans, and the like. The novel finds its way at the lower levels--it's a novel of the lower middle class and the lower class and the poor--and down there is so much life and love and devotion. It was strong medicine for me, cognitively dissonant, for Little Dorrit to love with such devotion. And Clennam loves her so deeply though he had no love in his life to that point. Where did he find such love in himself? Dickens does not just give the action. Unlike so many other writers (almost all), he lets the characters be themselves, revealing the plot from time to time as they get to it, but seldom hurrying. They are being themselves and leading their lives--of course caught up in the great machine of the novel; it's as though Dicken's characters' clothes get caught in the huge, creaking machinery of his plots which then tugs them along, or perhaps grinds them up... The novel is too full of words. It's verbose. Many times I could not follow the sense. It's labored. There are plot shifts just for the sake of changing the experiment. But as I finished the novel a benediction fell upon me--a moment that cannot be put into words.

A Tale of Imprisonment

Little Dorrit, as in many other Dickens books is full with character portrayal. There are a number of characters that are worth remembering such as Flora Finching, Mr.F's aunt etc. The division of the book into two parts makes sense because without the second one (Riches), the first part of the book(Poverty) would not be as strong as it is now. A great, sophisticated and fully rewarding book.

A great work long unnoticed

"Bleak House" may have been masterfully managed, but I preferred this tense tale of poverty, riches and the parasitic class that breeds both. It is as cautionary a tale as the former: the role of the machinery of government and capitalist class on the lives of all under them has never been so powerfully depicted. Mr Merdle was based on a real person, a Sadlier who killed himself in Hyde Park when he caused the Tipperary Bank to fail. Amy Dorrit is to be preferred to Esther Summerson as a heroine in not being so off-puttingly and impossibly sweet. Dickens' mastery of plot is such to create an exciting mystery and a rich interweaving of character and plot that kept me up all night unravelling the puzzle.