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Just before writing Bleak House at 1852, Charles Dickens took a break from being a novelist. He was in the middle of his profession, had already written some exceptionally popular books (including Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol), and was already a super-famous guy (also on his way to being the most well-known person in the world).

However, he took a couple of years off. Not to unwind or something, but to work on some other stuff: finding funding for cleaning up London slums, being a public health and anti-pollution activist, thinking about getting into Parliament, and reading about the ridiculousness of the Court of Chancery.

When he did finally get back to writing novels, he put out a series of very long, very complex works. Every has zillions of figures living at every level of society. Each focuses on a specific institution or bureaucracy, which is typically strongly criticized and mercilessly mocked.

(His favorite was David Copperfield. ) This is saying a whole lot, because not only did he write novel after novel after novel, but he also--at his "spare" time--wrote plays, short stories, and magazine articles; toured the country doing live readings from his works; and was a political activist with several causes. Somehow in there he also found the time to get married, have ten children, then leave his wife to an 18-year-old celebrity. Now that's energy.

Meanwhile, Shmoop requires two cups of coffee just to open our eyes in the daytime.

On the one hand, Bleak House is the story of a woman named Esther Summerson uncovering the truth about her parents, and in the process setting off a chain of events which includes murder, suicide, betrayal, love, and fear--and also pretty much every other emotion you can imagine. On the other hand, the novel is a fairly profound discussion about the philosophy of charity and philanthropy. How much if we take care of the less fortunate? Are some more deserving of charity compared to others? Should the poor be based on the good will of private individuals, or does the state have some sort of responsibility for assisting them? Throughout Dickens's day at Victorian England, many legislation criminalized the poor rather than attempting to help them get a leg up.

Well, in a neat hint, part of the novel is told through the voice and eyes of Esther, and part via an all-knowing third-person narrator. And never the twain shall meet. (Well, they really do very, very briefly at the close of the novel.) This allows Dickens do two things at once: he gets to snarl and sneer and normally be a mean-spirited observer of idiocy, incompetence, hypocrisy, and callousness (think of this voice as those two old men in the balcony of The Muppet Show), and also he gets to be all emotional and sensitive and affectionate and sweet (imagine the nicest, most humble and modest person you can, then multiply that by four).

So, London life from many sides, from all points of view, from every perspective--and all simultaneously.

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