Literature & Fiction, Legal 

Bleak House, a novel by Charles Dickens, was first published as a serial between March 1852 and September 1853, and is considered to be one of Dickens’ finest novels, containing vast, complex and engaging arrays of characters and sub-plots. The story is told partly by the novel’s heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. Memorable characters include haughty Lady Honoria Dedlock, the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn, the realistic John Jarndyce, and the childish and disingenuous Harold Skimpole, as well as the imprudent Richard Carstone. At the novel’s centre is long-running litigation Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which has far-reaching consequences for all involved. This case revolves around a testator who apparently made several wills. Dickens’ satirization of the English judicial system is based in part on his own experiences as a law clerk, and in part on his experiences as a litigant seeking to enforce copyright on his earlier books. Sir Leicester Dedlock and Honoria, Lady Dedlock (his junior by more than 20 years) live at his estate of Chesney Wold. Lady Dedlock is a beautiful, haughty woman who is very admired in the social world because of her good looks, fine clothes and regal bearing. Her comings and goings are considered the choicest gossip among the ”fashionable intelligence.” Unknown to Sir Leicester, Lady Dedlock had a lover, Captain Hawdon, before she married Sir Leicester – and had a child by him, Esther Summerson. Lady Dedlock, believing her daughter is dead, has chosen to live out her days ‘bored to death’ as a fashionable lady of the world. - from Amzon