Charles Dickens's “Bleak House” (original) (raw)

“He moved as if he had studied deportment with some very aged teacher, possibly with Mr. Turveydrop himself.” — Robert Bernard, Death and the Chaste Apprentice (1989)

Theme and Subject

• Legitimacy, identity, and law
• The most medical of Dickens's novels
• The Rouncewells: Old and New; or Captains of Industry and the Old Landed Gentry
• "Shouldering the Wheel" in Dickens's Bleak House

Narration

• The Pitchman and the Protégée: Oral Performance Art in Bleak House
• Ugoretz on Double Narration in Bleak House
• Johnson on Narration in Bleak House

Image, Symbol, and Motif

• Symbolism in Bleak House and the novel's illustrations
• Esther's biblical allusions and their ironic undertones
• Letters as a way of understanding the city: Dickens’ Bleak House
• “A very Moloch of a baby”: Dickens’s Funny Babies and Victorian Child Care Arrangements

Setting

• Descriptions of Fog in Bleak House
• The Crossing-Sweeper Nuisance (Punch)
• The Slum of All Fears: Dickens's Concern with Urban Poverty and Sanitation
• Dickens's Description of a Graveyard

Characters and Characterization

• John Gordon on Esther
• Inspector Bucket Points the Way
• "Three of Dickens' Marginal Women"

Illustrations

• Unidentified illustrator for the Co-operative Publication Society's edition of Dicken's works [1912?]
  • Mr. Tulkinghorn visits the Copyist's Lodging
  • Past the printed bill, which she looks at going by
• Forty Illustrations by Phiz plus preparatory sketchs for some and passages illustrated for all

Victorian Web Authors Charles Dickens

Last modified 14 February 2025