Bleak House is Charles Dickens's ninth full-length novel, originally published in nineteen monthly installments between March 1852 to September 1853. The novel has numerous plot strands, but they are anchored by Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a notorious and interminable law suit in the High Court of Chancery. All of the novel's characters are somehow connected to the suit, and to each other, in an intricate web. Bleak House is an overt critique of the Chancery system, which in Dickens's time was a bloated, corrupt institution wreaking havoc on English citizens' lives. In addition to this theme, Dickens introduces his usual critiques of English social life—particularly the exploitation and...
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