Dickens's most wide-ranging and symbolic novel. Bleak House is set in the world of Chancery and focuses in particular on the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

The case, which was originally brought to settle a dispute over a will, has been running at court for generations and has used up a great deal of health and wealth in its course. Richard Carstone and Ada Clare have been made wards of court and live with John Jarndyce at Bleak House while they await the verdict. During that time they marry, always expecting their fortune to improve...

Also living at Bleak House is Esther Summerson, a young woman of unknown origins. Tulkinghorn, the cunning lawyer of Sir Leicester Dedlock, has his suspicious as to her true parentage, however, and only death can stop him from making them known.

With its humour and pathos, its brilliant satire and its depiction of the Victorian world in microcosm, Bleak House is considered to be one of Dickens's finest achivements.