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 Clark Charles Dickens Clark Charles Dickens Clark (October 7, 1847 – March 15, 1908) was a United States federal judge. Born in Laurel Cove, Tennessee, Clark received a B.A. from Burritt College in 1871 and an LL.B. from Cumberland University in 1873. He was on the staff of Confederate States General George G. Dibrell in Richmond, Virginia from 1864 to 1865. He was in private practice in Manchester, Tennessee from 1876 to 1883, and in Chattanooga, Tennessee from 1883 to 1895. On December 17, 1894, Clark was nominated by President Grover Cleveland to seats on the United States District Court for