Bleak House Bleak House Bleak House is a novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published as a serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and the story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of "Bleak House" is a long-running legal case, "Jarndyce and Jarndyce", which came about because someone wrote several conflicting wills. Dickens uses this case to satirise the English judicial system. Though the legal profession criticised Dickens' satire as exaggerated, this novel helped support a judicial reform movement, which
Charles Dickens bibliography Charles Dickens bibliography The bibliography of Charles Dickens (1812–70) includes more than a dozen major novels, a large number of short stories (including Christmas-themed stories and ghost stories), several plays, several non-fiction books, and individual essays and articles. Dickens's novels were serialized initially in weekly or monthly magazines, then reprinted in standard book formats. A chronological list of Dickens' major works Editing and publication of Dickens's letters started in 1949 when publisher Rupert Hart-Davis persuaded Humphry House of Wadham College, Oxford, to edit a complete edition of the letters. House died suddenly aged 46 in 1955. However, the work continued,