Source: Wikipedia
Bleak House is the ninth novel by Charles Dickens, published in 20 monthly parts between March 1852 and September 1853. The plot concerns a long-running legal dispute (Jarndyce and Jarndyce) which has far-reaching consequences for all involved. Dickens's assault on the flaws of the British judiciary system is based in part on his own experiences as a law clerk. His harsh characterization of the slow, arcane Chancery law process gave voice to widespread frustration with the system, helping to set the stage for its eventual reform in the 1870s.
In Bleak House Dickens experimented with the device of dual narrators: an unnamed third-person narrator and the orphan Esther take turns to tell the story. The style is also remarkable: a hypnotic opening of three paragraphs without a complete sentence. The scope is probably the broadest Dickens ever attempted, ranging from the filthy slums to the landed aristocracy, in a narrative that is in equal parts satire and comedy. One character, Krook, dies of spontaneous human combustion.
Some critics, including George Gissing and G. K. Chesterton, take this to be Dickens's best novel.
The literary device of the opening paragraphs is consciously echoed in an American novel, also of the 1850s, almost certainly written by an escaped female slave. The manuscript was rediscovered in 2001, researched and published as The Bondswoman's Narrative.
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