Little Dorrit (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Dickens, Charles; Walder, Dennis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199596484 ISBN 13: 9780199596485

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2012

Synopsis

One of Dickens's greatest works of social criticism, Little Dorrit is a scathing indictment of mid-Victorian England which centers on the Marshalsea Prison and the Dorrit family who live there, against a background of government incompetence and financial scandal. Revelation and redemption haunt Dickens's portrayal of human relations as fundamentally distorted by class and money. The swindling financier Merdle, the bureaucratic nightmare of the Circumlocution Office, and a teeming cast of characters display the inadequacy of secular morality in the face of contemporary social and political confusion.

This edition uses the definitive Clarendon text and includes all forty-one original illustrations by Phiz. The volume boasts a new introduction by Dennis Walder, highlighting Dickens's move from social and political issues to more personal, even spiritual concerns while maintaining the wide scope of his mature fiction. Also included are an up-to-date bibliography and full chronology of the author's life and times, an appendix which reproduces Dickens's number plans for the novel, substantially revised and updated notes, and a map of London.

Mixing humor and pathos, irony and satire, Little Dorrit reveals a master of fiction in top form.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

About this title

From the Publisher:

The classic, definitive, world-famous Nonesuch Press edition of 1937, finally available again and bound in leather and linen. The text in these stunning volumes is taken from the 1867 Chapman and Hall edition, which became known as the Charles Dickens edition and was the last edition to be corrected by the author himself. The Nonesuch edition contains full-color illustrations selected by Dickens himself, by artists including Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"), George Cruikshank, John Leech, Robert Seymour, and George Cattermole.

The Nonesuch Dickens reproduces the original elegance of these beautiful editions. Books are printed on natural cream-shade high quality stock, quarter bound in bonded leather with cloth sides, include a ribbon marker, and feature special printed endpapers. Each volume is wrapped in a protective, clear acetate jacket.

The books are available as individual volumes, or as sets. The six-volume set contains Oliver Twist, Bleak House, Christmas Books, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, and Great Expectations together with Hard Times. The three-volume set contains A Tale of Two Cities, Little Dorrit, and The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit.

From the Inside Flap:

Of the complex, richly rewarding masterworks he wrote in the last decade of his life, Little Dorrit is the book in which Charles Dickens most fully unleashed his indignation at the fallen state of mid-Victorian society. Crammed with persons and incidents in whose recreation nothing is accidental or spurious, containing, in its picture of the Circumlocution Office, the most witheringly exact satire of a bureaucracy we possess, Little Dorrit is a stunning example of how thoroughly Dickens could put his flair for the theatrical and his comic genius the service of his passion for justice.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0199596484
• ISBN 13: 9780199596485
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 928
• Editor: Sucksmith Harvey Peter