Little Dorrit (Oxford World's Classics)

by Charles Dickens (Author), HarveyPeterSucksmith (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $3.43

  Highly regarded today as one of the greatest novels in English literature, Little Dorrit presents both a scathing indictment of mid-Victorian England and a devastating insight into the human condition. Examining the many social and mental prisons which incarcerate men and women, the novel also considers the nature of true spiritual freedom. Against a background of administrative and financial scandal, Dickens tells the moving story of the old Marshalsea prisoner who inherits a fortune and his devoted daughter's love for a man who believes he has done with love. He draws widely on the events of his own life and times, yet focuses a powerful imaginative vision which is as universal as it is specific, immediate, and intense. In Little Dorrit Dickens displays his characteristic mastery of irony and pathos, of satire and comedy, and the novel exemplifies his most mature, ambitious, and effective writing. This edition, which has the definitive Clarendon text, also includes Dickens's working notes and eight of the original illustrations from the first edition by 'Phiz'.

• Used

  Paperback
  1996

  $3.43

  With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Preston, University of Nottingham. With Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz). Little Dorrit is a classic tale of imprisonment, both literal and metaphorical, while Dickens' working title for the novel, Nobody's Fault, highlights its concern with personal responsibility in private and public life. Dickens' childhood experiences inform the vivid scenes in Marshalsea debtor's prison, while his adult perceptions of governmental failures shape his satirical picture of the Circumlocution Office. The novel's range of characters - the honest, the crooked, the selfish and the self-denying - offers a portrait of society about whose values Dickens had profound doubts. Little Dorrit is indisputably one of Dickens' finest works, written at the height of his powers. George Bernard Shaw called it 'a masterpiece among masterpices', a vedict shared by the novel's many admirers.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1953

  $5.37

  This complex, sombre work, haunted by the symbol of the prison, is more than any other Dickens novel a study of society. George Bernard Shaw called it 'a masterpiece among many masterpieces' and claimed it converted him to socialism. Although many of the social conditions to which it refers have passed into history, Lionel Trilling asserts in his Introduction that 'Little Dorrit, one of the most profound of Dickens's novels and one of the most significant works of the nineteenth century, will not fail to be thought of as speaking with a peculiar passion and intimacy to our own time.'

• New

  Paperback
  1996

  $7.91

  With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Preston, University of Nottingham. With Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz). Little Dorrit is a classic tale of imprisonment, both literal and metaphorical, while Dickens' working title for the novel, Nobody's Fault, highlights its concern with personal responsibility in private and public life. Dickens' childhood experiences inform the vivid scenes in Marshalsea debtor's prison, while his adult perceptions of governmental failures shape his satirical picture of the Circumlocution Office. The novel's range of characters - the honest, the crooked, the selfish and the self-denying - offers a portrait of society about whose values Dickens had profound doubts. Little Dorrit is indisputably one of Dickens' finest works, written at the height of his powers. George Bernard Shaw called it 'a masterpiece among masterpices', a vedict shared by the novel's many admirers.