With its sustained social criticism and complex construction, Charles Dickens's Bleak House (1853) is considered by many critics to be Dickens's most remarkable novel.

Janice Allan offers a starting point for those new to Dickens's weighty text and the daunting body of critical work that surrounds it. This literary sourcebook:

*introduces the contextual issues that most directly influenced Dickens's writing and reprints relevant source documents

*provides a comprehensive survey of the criticism of Bleak House from publication to the present, then introduces, reprints and annotates extracts from significant critical texts

*discusses key passages of the text, which are reprinted and fully annotated for ease of use

*includes cross-references throughout the Sourcebook, making illuminating connections between the text, contexts and interpretations of the novel

*concludes the volume with suggestions to further reading, enabling additional focused study

Both accessible and informative, this Sourcebook is an invaluable guide to one of the nineteenth century's most important and frequently studied novels.