Bleak House

First published in monthly parts from March, 1852, to September, 1853, this novel follows the fortunes of three pedestrian charactersEsther Summerson, Ada Clare and Richard Carstone. The story they tell embodies Dickens’ merciless indictment of the Court of Chancery and its bungling, morally corrupt handling of the endless case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, giving the novel its scope and meaning. Starting with Esther’s account of her lonely, unhappy childhood, her role as protégée of the worthy John Jarndyce, Richard and Ada’s guardian, the tale develops the relations between the three young people in the Jarndyce household. Numerous other characters contribute to the complex portrait of society which emerges from the novel. They include the romantic, effusive and unworldly Harold Skimpole (based on Leigh Hunt, poet, journalist, and critic, who published The Examiner in which he introduced the public to Keats and Shelley); the boisterous, short-tempered Boythorn (based on Walter Savage Landor, poet and essayist, mentor to Robert Browning); Krook, the rag-and-bottle shopkeeper who dies a hideous death by spontaneous combustion; Gridley and the crazed Miss Flite, both ruined by Chancery; Mrs. Jellyby, neglectful of domestic responsibilities in favor of telescopic philanthropy; the greasy Mr. Chadband, a parson of no particular denomination; and Conversation Kenge and Mr. Vholes, lawyers both.