Bleak House View and Read discussion
This topic is about
Bleak House
Bleak House
>
BLEAK HOUSE INTRODUCTION AND RESOURCES
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
"Perhaps the most glorious Masterpiece Theatre of all time..."
-- The Wall Street Journal
"Grandly entertaining . . . the only bleak aspect to this miniseries is that it doesn't last forever."
-- TV Guide
"Acclaimed writer Andrew Davies turns his talents to one of Charles Dickens' most brilliant novels, arguably the greatest ever depiction of Victorian London -- from its splendid heights to its most wretched depths. The series was first broadcast by BBC in 2005, starting with an hour long first episode, followed by 14 half-hour installments.
Bleak House features some of the most famous plot twists in literary history, including a case of human spontaneous combustion and an infamous inheritance dispute that is tied up for generations in the dysfunctional English courts.
An epic feast of characters and storylines, Bleak House is Dickens' passionate indictment of the convoluted legal system that is as searingly relevant today as it was in the mid-19th century. The court of Chancery becomes the center of a tangle of relationships at all levels of society and a metaphor for the decay and corruption at the heart of Victorian England." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/b...
BBC has a very helpful web site devoted to the drama, with guides to each episode http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/bleakhouse...
and to the many characters
http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/bleakhouse...
Mod
"Modern readers are put off by Bleak House‘s length, and its Victorian setting. Don’t be: this is no dusty, drawn out morality tale. Bleak House has been called the first detective novel in English, and there is a mystery to be solved, a blackmail attempt, avaricious lawyers, a thoroughly nasty old man who spontaneously combusts — whether because of his drinking or his wickedness is never entirely clear, though Dickens was at pains to point out that spontaneous combustion is a genuine, documented phenomenon.
There are a welter of amateur detectives, most of them with less than admirable motives, who cause a great deal of trouble with their investigations, before the professional, Inspector Bucket, the first great English detective, makes his late but decisive entrance." - See more at: http://www.justinhuggler.com/2013/01/...
Mod
Bleak House was published in 20 monthly installments between March 1852 and September 1853, each containing 32 pages of text and two illustrations by Phiz (the last two being published together as a double issue). Each cost one shilling, except for the final double issue, which cost two shillings.
The publication schedule for the original book (along with lots more good information) can be found here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleak_House NOTE: MAJOR SPOILERS IN THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE! I recommend staying with BBC, PBS and SparkNotes unless you already know the plot and all its twists and turns.
SparkNotes has useful chapter by chapter plot summaries to help us figure out how to organize the thread. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bleakho...
Mod
Chancery was going through a reform process even as Dickens wrote Bleak House, but even today cases grind on interminably--and not just in the UK.
The longest running civil suit in the U.S. is Knapik vs. Penn Central, which started back in 1968, when the Pennsylvania and New York Central Railroads merged and the reorganized company furloughed 29 employees without extending time served or other benefits because, in their view, the merger agreement didn’t include them. In 1969, the furloughed employees filed suit in the U.S. District Court for Northern Ohio. (Knapik v. Penn Central, case 69-722).
Forty-three years later, only two of the 32 original claimants remained alive; costs had soared to over $15 million (from an original claim of about $600,000); then at long last, in 2012, a Pennsylvania District Court judge ruled in favor of a prior arbitration agreement, which seems to have ended things.
Hi HanaThis is a good idea. I'm a month behind, but Bleak House has been on my TBR list forever, and this might help me get up and going on it.
Mod
We're actually just starting up. Anne and I both got behind schedule so it's perfect if you join us now.
I've fallen in love with both the film and the book so far and I think they really complement each other. I actually had a sort of Dickens phobia and this is curing me--and turning me into a fan!
Wonderful! Thanks for letting me join.
Mod
Finally managed to read a bit of it, and should get to watching the movie soon - I'm super excited for it, it looks so great :) I think It'll help me a lot to have a visual of it. Thank you so much for all those resources! I'm loving the Sparknotes chapters summaries :P
Mod
Mod
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Still haven't started this one. Will finish up The Far Pavilions first and then take another look here.
Bleak House View and Read
Books mentioned in this topic
The Far Pavilions (other topics)Bleak House (other topics)
Bleak House (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Charles Dickens (other topics)Hesketh Pearson (other topics)
'If he were alive today, he would be the king of film writers, with Hollywood at his feet.' Hesketh Pearson
Charles Dickens was the first person to transform serial suspense into a large-scale social event. The closest parallel we have today is the Harry Potter phenomenon--people lining up for hours to get their midnight copies, Harry Potter hats, fansites, group reads; that was what reading Dickens was like in the mid-1800s.
"Dickens was also the true ancestor of today's writers of prime-time television. The pressures he experienced must have been much the same as theirs today. He monitored the public's reaction to the story as it unfolded and adjusted the balance of the tale accordingly. He also knew the anxiety of writing to deadline, relying on inspiration and momentum to carry him through to a satisfactory conclusion. 'I can never write with effect, especially in a serious way, until I have got my steam up, or in other words until I have become so excited with my subject that I cannot leave off'."
For more about Charles Dickens, fortune hunter, entrepreneur and author of the pop-culture serial story click here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/b...