Little Dorrit is a novel written by Charles Dickens. Released in serial form from 1855 to 1857, it tells of the misfortunes of its titular character and serves as a satire and critique of debtors' prisons and government bureaucracy.
Characters[]
- Amy Dorritt - a seamstress
- Arthur Clennan - a traveller to and from China
- William Dorritt - a victim of the debtors' prisons and Amy's father
- Mr. Perkins - a rent-collector
- Riguad - a European man in prison for murdering his wife
- Barnacles - a bureaucrat
- Merdle - an unscrupulous financier
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
A novel of serendipity, of fortunes won and lost, and of the spectre of imprisonment that hangs over all aspects of Victorian society, Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit is edited with an introduction by Stephen Wall in Penguin Classics.
When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother's seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy's father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea prison. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr Panks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens's maturity.
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hard Times | Charles Dickens | 1854 | A novel by the same author with similar themes |
| The Great Fire of London | Peter Ackroyd | 1982 | A novel whose background is supplied by Little Dorrit |
| Mary Barton | Elizabeth Gaskell | 1848 | A novel with similar themes |
Sources[]
- Goodreads
- Wikipedia