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
Dora Annie Dickens Dora Annie Dickens Dora Annie Dickens (16 August 1850 – 14 April 1851) was the infant daughter of English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine. She was the ninth of their ten children, and the youngest of their three daughters. Born at 1 Devonshire Terrace, Dora Dickens was named after the character Dora Spenlow, the child-bride of David Copperfield in Dickens's 1850 novel "David Copperfield". According to Dickens's oldest daughter Mary, on the day of Dora's unexpected death on 14 April 1851, her father had spent much of his time "playing with the children and carrying little Dora about