“Bleak House” by Charles Dickens. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1853. First edition, with 39 full-page illustrations by H. K. Browne

“Bleak House” was first published as a 20- episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the center of “Bleak House” is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, “Jarndyce and Jarndyce,” which came about because a testator has written several conflicting wills. In a preface to the 1853 first hardcover edition, Dickens claimed there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably the “Thellusson v. Woodford” case in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though the legal profession criticized Dickens's satire as exaggerated, this novel helped support a judicial reform movement which culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s. [Source: Wikipedia]

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