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Audiobook editionPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
An empty house, a notice in the window, and a street full of curiosity: what lies behind the shuttered door?
In A House to Let, an ordinary London street becomes the starting point for linked stories by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter. Neighbours wonder about the empty house, while comedy, domestic drama, mystery and verse draw you into the lives connected with it.
Dickens brings neighbourly comedy and an eye for street life. In Collins's Trottle's Report, a servant investigates the people connected with the house. Gaskell's The Manchester Marriage turns toward family feeling, hardship and private choices in northern England. Together with Procter's verse, these pieces offer changing moods within one shared frame.
What you’ll discover
- A door worth watching Follow the curiosity that turns an empty house into the centre of attention.
- Comedy close to home Meet Dickens's odd characters and notice the habits that give a London street its life.
- A servant investigates Join Trottle as he seeks out what he can learn about the house's connections.
- The weight of choices Explore family feeling and hardship through Gaskell's domestic drama, The Manchester Marriage.
- Four writers, changing moods Move between detective curiosity, comedy, domestic drama and verse without leaving the shared frame.
Who will love it
You will love this if you enjoy Christmas stories with a puzzle at the centre, warm comic voices, and tales that nest inside one another.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- An empty house invites a question
- Two rivals offer competing answers
- A family finds a fragile refuge
- Loyal silence can look like guilt
- Money cannot purchase real respect
- Devotion leaves Bertha facing her needs
- Trottle chooses to knock and look
- The mystery brings vulnerable people forward
Who’s who
- Miss Sophonisba, called SarahAn elderly, warm and fussy lodger who tells the story and cannot rest until she learns why the House opposite stays empty.
- TrottleHer loyal manservant of thirty-two years, respectable and opinionated, who solves the puzzle by knocking on the House door himself.
- Jabez JarberA small, fussy old gentleman and former suitor who collects tales from the parish and rivals Trottle for her thanks.
- NorahA loyal nurse in the Openshaw tale who guards a secret to protect the mistress she loves.
- Mr. OpenshawA blunt Manchester businessman whose hard manner softens when he meets a sick child and her mother.
- Toby MagsmanA showman who once ran his amusements in the House and tells how his little friend Chops went into Society.
- BerthaThe heroine of the poem, who gives her life to her brother Herbert and faces a hard choice in love.
- Benjamin's motherA cheerful, grasping old woman who keeps the House for its owner and wants payment for her trouble.
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A House to Let
by Charles Dickens; Wilkie Collins; Elizabeth Gaskell; Adelaide Anne Procter · 1858
A single eye glints through a shutter, and an old woman cannot stop watching the empty house across the way.
Medium level2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“When people say Dickens exaggerates, it seems to me they can have no eyes and no ears.”
In short
Why would an old woman in a rented London lodging find she cannot stop watching an empty house? On the fifth of November, while boys drag their Guys through the brown fog, she looks across the street.
A House to Let at a glance
- Reading time
- About 2 h 15 min1 h 45 min fast, 2 h 40 min slow
- Length
- 31,600 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1858by Charles Dickens; Wilkie Collins; Elizabeth Gaskell; Adelaide Anne Procter
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A glint at a shutter starts everything
Miss Sophonisba has lived in Tunbridge Wells for nearly ten years. Her doctor says she needs a fillip, and her servant Trottle says she needs tone. She laughs and agrees to a change of air in London.
Trottle finds a lodging for six months. The rooms face a House to Let, and in his words it never gets let. Nobody can say why. It has stood empty for six, eight or ten years, depending on who is asked.
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Details
- First published
- 1858
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 2 h 30 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Dickens, Charles, et al. A House to Let. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-house-to-let.
Dickens, C., Collins, W., Gaskell, E., & Procter, A. A. (2026). A house to let. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-house-to-let (Original work published 1858)
Dickens, Charles, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Adelaide Anne Procter. A House to Let. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-house-to-let.
@book{dickens2026house,
author = {Dickens, Charles and Collins, Wilkie and Gaskell, Elizabeth and Procter, Adelaide Anne},
title = {A House to Let},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-house-to-let},
note = {First published 1858}
}
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What is A House to Let about?
An old woman in a London lodging becomes fixed on an empty house across the street. Her suitor gathers tales from former tenants, while her servant investigates the House directly and discovers why it stays unlet.
Who wrote A House to Let?
Four authors share it. Charles Dickens wrote the showman's story, Wilkie Collins wrote the frame and Trottle's report, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote The Manchester Marriage, and Adelaide Anne Procter wrote the poem of three evenings.
Is A House to Let a true story and when was it written?
It is fiction, written as a Christmas number of a weekly magazine in 1858. The tales are invented, though they draw on real Victorian places such as Tunbridge Wells, Manchester and London.
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).
“Society, taken as a whole, is all dwarfs.”
More by Charles Dickens; Wilkie Collins; Elizabeth Gaskell; Adelaide Anne Procter
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