Bleak House

Study of the genesis of the novel is facilitated by the reproduction of Dickens’ working plans and, for the first time, by some thousands of meticulous textual notes. "Backgrounds" offers all of Dickens’ correspondence about Bleak House as well as contextual materials that document the Victorian controversy over pollution, a theme central to the novel, and present contemporary attitudes toward the government, the courts, and the police, to enhance the setting of the story. Also featured are several hundred annotations which fully elucidate for today’s readers the allusions and topical references in this remarkably allusive Victorian masterpiece. Especially helpful is a clear exposition of the nature of law procedures in the Court of Chancery, which is crucial to an understanding of the central action of the story. "Critical essays" reprinted here include interpretations by G. K. Chesterton, J. Hillis Miller, George Ford, A. O. J. Cockshut, W. J. Harvey, H. M. Daleski, and Ian Ousby.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is one of the most acclaimed and popular writers of all time. His many works include the classics The Old Curiosity Shop, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Barnaby Rudge, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Bleak House, Hard Times, Our Mutual Friend, The Pickwick Papers and many more. George Ford was Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Rochester. He was the author of Keats and the Victorians, Dickens and His Readers, Double Measure: A Study of the Novels and Stories of D. H. Lawrence, and The Making of a Secret Agent. He was a founding editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and was editor, with Sylvère Monod, of the Norton Critical Edition of Hard Times. Professor Ford was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of the Wilbur Cross Medal from Yale University. He died in 1994. Sylvère Monod is Emeritus Professor of English at the Sorbonne. He is the author of Dickens the Novelist, Histoire de la litérature anglaise de Victoria ý Elizabeth II, Martin Chuzzlewit: A Critical Study, and Madame Homais (a novel). He is editor, with George Ford, of the Norton Critical Edition of Hard Times, and of numerous French editions of works by Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, and the Brontës. Professor Monod is a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and a Commander of the British Empire.