Bleak House being raised by Miss Barbary, Lady Dedlock's sister. Esther does not know Miss Barbary is her aunt. After Miss Barbary dies, John Jarndyce becomes Esther's guardian and assigns the Chancery lawyer "Conversation" Kenge to take charge of her future. After attending school for six years, Esther moves in with him at Bleak House. Jarndyce simultaneously assumes custody of two other wards, Richard Carstone and Ada Clare (who are both his and one another's distant cousins). They are beneficiaries in one of the wills at issue in "Jarndyce and Jarndyce"; their guardian is a beneficiary under another will, and the two
Bleak House of coroners' inquests that he had attended when he had been a reporter. In the preface of the book edition of "Bleak House", Dickens wrote: "I shall not abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable Spontaneous Combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received." George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton are among those literary critics and writers who consider "Bleak House" to be the best novel that Charles Dickens wrote. As Chesterton put it: ""Bleak House" is not certainly Dickens' best book; but perhaps it is his best novel". Harold Bloom, in his book