Bleak House was published in twenty monthly parts by Bradbury & Evans from March 1852 to September 1853, and in a single volume in September 1853. It is, by the consensus of most Dickens scholars since the mid-twentieth century, his masterpiece — the novel in which his gifts for character, social criticism, symbolic imagery, and narrative architecture are most fully and most ambitiously deployed. Its subject is nothing less than the entirety of English society, connected through the endless Chancery lawsuit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which devours the hopes, fortunes, and lives of everyone it touches.
The Novel
The novel opens with one of the most famous passages in English prose: “London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth… Fog everywhere.” The fog is literal and metaphorical: it is the fog of the Court of Chancery, which obscures justice, delays resolution, and makes litigation profitable only for lawyers.
The dual narrative — alternating between Esther Summerson’s first-person account and an omniscient present-tense narrator whose voice is among the most distinctive in English fiction — follows dozens of characters connected, directly or indirectly, to the case. Lady Dedlock, the proud aristocrat hiding a secret past. Inspector Bucket, the first detective in English fiction. Jo the crossing-sweeper, who dies of neglect. Richard Carstone, destroyed by hope. Krook, the rag-and-bone dealer who dies of spontaneous combustion (Dickens defended the scientific possibility vigorously).
Themes
Institutional failure — Chancery is Dickens’s symbol for every institution that exists to serve itself rather than the people it was created to help. The law, the church, the aristocracy, philanthropy — all are shown to be self-perpetuating systems of exploitation.
Connection — the novel’s immense cast is linked by webs of obligation, inheritance, and disease. The smallpox that kills Jo eventually scars Esther. Lady Dedlock’s secret connects the highest society to the lowest slum.
Responsibility — in a world of institutional failure, individual responsibility is the only hope. Esther, John Jarndyce, Inspector Bucket — the novel’s moral heroes are those who act personally and specifically rather than through institutions.
Collecting Bleak House
First edition in parts (Bradbury & Evans, London, 1852–1853): Twenty monthly parts in blue-green wrappers. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”) with 40 etched plates and two additional plates.
Market values:
- Complete in original parts, fine: $10,000–$30,000
- Very good: $4,000–$10,000
- First edition in book form: $3,000–$8,000
The novel’s growing critical reputation — it is now more widely studied than any other Dickens novel — and the success of the 2005 BBC adaptation have increased collector interest significantly.