Little Dorrit - C. Dickens

A novel of serendipity, of fortunes won and lost, and of the spectre of imprisonment that hangs over all aspects of Victorian society, Charles Dickens&#39s Little Dorrit is edited with an introduction by Stephen Wall in Penguin Classics. When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother&#39s seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy&#39s father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea prison. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr Panks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens&#39s maturity. Stephen Wall&#39s introduction examines Dickens&#39s transformation of childhood memories of his father&#39s incarceration in the Marshalsea debtors&#39 prison. This revised edition includes expanded notes, appendices and suggestion for further reading by Helen Small, a chronology of Dickens&#39s life and works, and original illustrations.