40 h 15 minAudiobook11 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 40 h 15 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the promise of an inheritance consumes the very life it seems to offer?
London lies under mud and fog while the Court of Chancery turns through an inheritance dispute few can understand. In Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, Jarndyce and Jarndyce drains fortunes and hope. John Jarndyce offers Esther Summerson, Ada, and Richard a home, but Richard finds the lawsuit’s promise hard to resist.
Esther brings kindness to others while struggling with shame about her own beginnings. Elsewhere, the wealthy Lady Dedlock shows an interest in legal handwriting that draws the attention of Tulkinghorn, her husband’s lawyer. As private histories and public injustice meet, family mysteries reach from grand houses into London’s poorest streets.
What you’ll discover
- A court without end See how a disputed inheritance turns hope into dependence and makes delay a destructive force.
- Esther’s quiet courage Follow a young woman whose care for others stands against her uncertainty about herself.
- Secrets behind ceremony Watch Lady Dedlock’s guarded world come under the scrutiny of a lawyer who collects secrets.
- Lives woven together Trace connections among households, courtrooms, and streets as distant lives draw steadily closer.
- Compassion amid corruption Find sharp social comedy and stubborn hope within Dickens’s fierce portrait of institutional neglect.
Who will love it
Readers who love a large cast, secrets buried in old houses, sharp social comedy and a detective on the trail, and anyone drawn to Victorian London in all its fog, mud, wit and warmth.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A fog, a court, and a case
- Lady Dedlock and the lawyer
- Esther's story begins
- Bleak House and its people
- The law-writer, the boy and the lawyer
- Love, debt and drifting
- Illness, a secret and a proposal
- Smoke, murder and pursuit
- What the book is about, and how it is told
Who’s who
- Esther SummersonA shy, observant orphan who tells much of the story and wants only to be useful and loved.
- John JarndyceKind master of Bleak House, who hates being thanked and blames the east wind whenever he is troubled.
- Ada ClareA gentle, golden-haired ward of the court who becomes Esther's dearest friend.
- Richard CarstoneA cheerful, restless young ward who cannot settle on a career and puts his hope in the great lawsuit.
- Lady DedlockA beautiful, cold lady of fashion who hides a secret behind her composure.
- Mr. TulkinghornThe Dedlocks' silent solicitor, who collects secrets and follows each one patiently to its end.
- Inspector BucketA friendly, watchful detective with a fat forefinger who tracks the truth through the city.
- JoA crossing sweeper who knows nothing, is told to move on, and wants only to be left alone.
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 40 h 15 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 11 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Bleak House
by Charles Dickens · 1852
A lawsuit that no one can end consumes a family, while a lady of fashion hides a secret from her own husband.
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In short
Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in monthly parts in the early 1850s. It opens in a London fog and moves between two voices.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A fog, a court, and a case
The book begins in November fog. Dickens describes London as a place where mud, smoke and damp cover everything, and at its center sits the High Court of Chancery. The Lord Chancellor presides there over a case called Jarndyce and Jarndyce. It has run so long that no living person understands it. Lawyers have grown rich on it, and families have inherited it along with their hatred.
The court is full of sad figures. A little mad old woman stands in the hall every day, expecting a judgment. A man from Shropshire tries to speak to the Chancellor and is never heard. A prisoner is brought up again and again, tangled in accounts and charged with contempt. Dickens treats all of this as a joke the lawyers tell each other, while it kills people outside the room.
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What is Bleak House about?
It follows the long lawsuit Jarndyce and Jarndyce and the many people it affects. An orphan named Esther Summerson, wards of the court, a proud baronet and his lady, and a poor boy are all tied together by the case and by a hidden secret.
Who tells the story of Bleak House?
Two voices share it. A present-tense narrator describes the whole city with irony and anger. Esther Summerson, a modest young woman, tells her own part in the past tense and in a warm, personal voice.
What is Jarndyce and Jarndyce?
It is a fictional case in the Court of Chancery over a will. It has run so long that no one understands it, and it has become mostly a matter of legal costs that ruin the families caught in it.
The author
Charles Dickens
1812–1870 · English novelist
Charles Dickens was an English novelist born in Portsmouth in 1812. He lived in London and later at Gad’s Hill Place in Kent, where he died in 1870. His books include The Pickwick Papers (1836–1837), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1849–1850), and Great Expectations (1860–1861).
More by Charles Dickens
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