Bleak House character list below for the supposed inspiration of individual characters). Although not a character, the "Jarndyce and Jarndyce" case is a vital part of the novel. It is believed to have been inspired by a number of real-life Chancery cases involving wills, including those of Charles Day and William Jennens, and of Charlotte Smith's father-in-law Richard Smith. Much criticism of "Bleak House" focuses on its unique narrative structure: it is told both by a third-person omniscient narrator and a first-person narrator (Esther Summerson). The omniscient narrator speaks in the present tense and is a dispassionate observer. Esther Summerson tells her
Bleak House, Broadstairs the house held a special attraction for Dickens, and was the residence he "most desired" in his most favourite of watering places, Broadstairs. In the novel "Sophy Laurie", published in 1865, William Carew Hazlitt writes: "It is at Broadstairs they are staying; in the big, bleak house that stands alone on a peak of the chalk cliff, as if it were some sentinel set over the rovers up and down the sea." For much of the 20th century, Bleak House was in two quite distinct parts, serving as both a private residence and a Dickens memorial museum. In 2012 the