What is the name of the alcoholic who runs a rag and bottle shop and lodging house, who dies when he spontaneously combusts, in the novel ‘Bleak House’ by Charles Dickens?
Bleak House side of familiar things". And some remarkable things do happen: One character, Krook, smells of brimstone and eventually dies of spontaneous human combustion. This was highly controversial. The nineteenth century saw the increasing triumph of the scientific worldview. Scientifically inclined writers, as well as doctors and scientists, rejected spontaneous human combustion as legend or superstition. When the instalment of "Bleak House" containing Krook's demise appeared, the literary critic George Henry Lewes accused Dickens of "giving currency to a vulgar error". Dickens vigorously defended the reality of spontaneous human combustion and cited many documented cases, as well as his own memories
Bleak House of coroners' inquests that he had attended when he had been a reporter. In the preface of the book edition of "Bleak House", Dickens wrote: "I shall not abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable Spontaneous Combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received." George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton are among those literary critics and writers who consider "Bleak House" to be the best novel that Charles Dickens wrote. As Chesterton put it: ""Bleak House" is not certainly Dickens' best book; but perhaps it is his best novel". Harold Bloom, in his book