Hist Fic Saturday ~ Bleak House by Charles Dickens

On Hist Fic Saturday

Let's go back to Victorian London 

A cloth bound classic
Penguin Classic
2011

Over summer I have listened to Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Just listening to a snippet here and there it’s taken me a while to get through it. However, it's my favourite Dickens novel and so well worth taking my time over. Whilst I have read it and watched the excellent BBC TV adaptation I have never listened to the story before, luckily, thanks to Librivox, I was fortunate to find a recording of Bleak House, narrated by the excellent, Mil Nicholson, who reads the story with fine attention to detail, and such skill with character definition that it brings a whole new dimension to the story. 

I am sure that everyone knows what Bleak House is all about, but in a nutshell, it's complicated story about a legal dispute involving Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which has been prominent in the London court of Chancery for many years. Along with the story of Ada Clare and Richard Carson, who are the latest wards in Jarndyce, it is also the story of Esther Summerson and of her connection to the enigmatic, Lady Honoria Deadlock. All these characters are bound together in such a perverse and complicated way that it takes Dickens well over a thousand pages to untangle the plot.

That the plot is eventually untangled is tantamount to Dickens unique ability to weave together the most ambitious of story lines.The great and the good of Victorian London are laid bare; none escape Dickens vitriolic observation or his sardonic wit, and as always, he combines good and evil, happy and sad, and mingles all together with a good old dollop of wonderful storytelling. 

The dark and seedy world of London society comes gloriously to life with all the finely drawn characteristics which are so reminiscent of this author's very special way with words.

Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.

Biography source : Goodreads

You can find out more about Charles Dickens by clicking here

Find out more about Librivox by clicking here

You can read Bleak House for free by going to Project Gutenberg by clicking here

“There were two classes of charitable people: one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.” 

― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

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Review ~ A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens..

Alma Books
2016

Ebenezer Scrooge is a lonely, miserly old man who hates Christmas, which he dismisses as “humbug”. One Christmas Eve, however, he is visited by a series of ghosts who reveal to him the innocence he has lost, the wretchedness of his future and the poverty of the present, which he has so far ignored. This experience teaches Scrooge the true meaning of the holiday and leaves him a transformed man.

With its memorable cast of characters such as Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is the most heart-warming of seasonal tales, a timeless classic that continues to enchant readers around the world and a lesson in charity and hopefulness that is as powerful today as when it was first written in 1843.

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For me no Christmas is complete without reading A Christmas Carol. No-one can conjure a Victorian Christmas like Dickens, who with his unique perspective, brings the story of Christmas to glorious life. We all know the story of how the miserly and cantankerous, Ebeneezer Scrooge is made to realise the importance of human kindness and, of how, at the end of his journey he is changed irrevocably into a nicer person.

But it must also be remembered that Dickens wrote other Christmas stories, of which A Christmas Carol is but one. In this volume we are also given..

The Chimes ( 1843)

The Cricket on the Hearth (1845) 

The Battle of Life (1846)

The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848)

This is a really lovely version and what I find important these days is that the font is a good size for comfortable reading . All too often classics stories are spoiled by much too tiny a font - publishers take note !!

Also included in this version are a few photographs of Dickens and his family along with notes on Dickens's life and also on Dickens's works which I found to be really interesting and informative.

Available from Alma Books and all good book shops.

My thanks to Will at Alma Books for my review copy of A Christmas Carol and other Christmas stories.