Little dorrit, paperback/charles dickens

A novel of serendipity, of fortunes won and lost, and of the spectre of imprisonment that hangs over all aspects of Victorian society When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mothers seamstress, and in the affairs of Amys 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 Dickenss maturity.

Stephen Walls introduction examines Dickenss transformation of childhood memories of his fathers incarceration in the Marshalsea debtors prison.

This revised edition includes expanded notes, appendices and suggestion for further reading by Helen Small, a chronology of Dickenss life and works, and original illustrations.

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