Charles Dickens scenes in "The Pickwick Papers" are claimed to have been influential in having the Fleet Prison shut down. Karl Marx asserted that Dickens "issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together". George Bernard Shaw even remarked that "Great Expectations" was more seditious than Marx's "Das Kapital". The exceptional popularity of Dickens's novels, even those with socially oppositional themes ("Bleak House", 1853; "Little Dorrit", 1857; "Our Mutual Friend", 1865), not only underscored his almost preternatural ability to create compelling storylines and unforgettable characters, but also ensured
My Companions in the Bleak House herself held there for eleven months in for sedition after signing Charter 77, which criticised the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for human rights failings related to the Helsinki Accords. Kantůrková herself does not appear in the book, which is narrated by a character called Eva. The title is a reference to Charles Dickens' novel "Bleak House", which satirised the English justice system. In the book, Kantůrková spells out seven rules for life as a prisoner of conscience: The narrative takes place from 8 March to 8 March, beginning and ending on International Women's Day. Aspects of the characters' prison life include