Bleak House (1852)

The labyrinthine, ingenious plot of Bleak House focuses on the seemingly endless lawsuit Jarndyce and Jarndyce, an inheritance dispute that has been moving through the courts for years. Dozens of characters, including the innocent young narrator Esther Summerson, her friends Richard Carstone and Ada Clare, and the jaded aristocrats Sir and Lady Dedlock, are directly or indirectly caught up in the case. Written in bold and inventive language, Bleak House is Dickens’s epic vision of Victorian society.