Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens [big ebook reader txt] 📗

Little Dorrit

By Charles Dickens.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Preface to the 1857 Edition Little Dorrit Book I: Poverty I: Sun and Shadow II: Fellow Travellers III: Home IV: Mrs. Flintwinch Has a Dream V: Family Affairs VI: The Father of the Marshalsea VII: The Child of the Marshalsea VIII: The Lock IX: Little Mother X: Containing the Whole Science of Government XI: Let Loose XII: Bleeding Heart Yard XIII: Patriarchal XIV: Little Dorrit’s Party XV: Mrs. Flintwinch Has Another Dream XVI: Nobody’s Weakness XVII: Nobody’s Rival XVIII: Little Dorrit’s Lover XIX: The Father of the Marshalsea in Two or Three Relations XX: Moving in Society XXI: Mr. Merdle’s Complaint XXII: A Puzzle XXIII: Machinery in Motion XXIV: Fortune-Telling XXV: Conspirators and Others XXVI: Nobody’s State of Mind XXVII: Five-and-Twenty XXVIII: Nobody’s Disappearance XXIX: Mrs. Flintwinch Goes on Dreaming XXX: The Word of a Gentleman XXXI: Spirit XXXII: More Fortune-Telling XXXIII: Mrs. Merdle’s Complaint XXXIV: A Shoal of Barnacles XXXV: What Was Behind Mr. Pancks on Little Dorrit’s Hand XXXVI: The Marshalsea Becomes an Orphan Book II: Riches I: Fellow Travellers II: Mrs. General III: On the Road IV: A Letter from Little Dorrit V: Something Wrong Somewhere VI: Something Right Somewhere VII: Mostly, Prunes and Prism VIII: The Dowager Mrs. Gowan Is Reminded That “It Never Does” IX: Appearance and Disappearance X: The Dreams of Mrs. Flintwinch Thicken XI: A Letter from Little Dorrit XII: In Which a Great Patriotic Conference Is Holden XIII: The Progress of an Epidemic XIV: Taking Advice XV: No Just Cause or Impediment Why These Two Persons Should Not Be Joined Together XVI: Getting On XVII: Missing XVIII: A Castle in the Air XIX: The Storming of the Castle in the Air XX: Introduces the Next XXI: The History of a Self-Tormentor XXII: Who Passes by This Road So Late? XXIII: Mistress Affery Makes a Conditional Promise, Respecting Her Dreams XXIV: The Evening of a Long Day XXV: The Chief Butler Resigns the Seals of Office XXVI: Reaping the Whirlwind XXVII: The Pupil of the Marshalsea XXVIII: An Appearance in the Marshalsea XXIX: A Plea in the Marshalsea XXX: Closing In XXXI: Closed XXXII: Going XXXIII: Going! XXXIV: Gone Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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Preface to the 1857 Edition

I have been occupied with this story, during many working hours of two years. I must have been very ill employed, if I could not leave its merits and demerits as a whole, to express themselves on its being read as a whole. But, as it is not unreasonable to suppose that I may have held its threads with a more continuous attention than anyone else can have given them during its desultory publication, it is not unreasonable to ask that the weaving may be looked at in its completed state, and with the pattern finished.

If I might offer any apology for so exaggerated a fiction as the Barnacles and the Circumlocution Office, I would seek it in the common experience of an Englishman, without presuming to mention the unimportant fact of my having done that violence to good manners, in the days of a Russian war, and of a Court of Inquiry at Chelsea. If I might make so bold as to defend that extravagant conception, Mr. Merdle, I would hint that it originated after the Railroad-share epoch, in the times of a certain Irish bank, and of one or two other equally laudable enterprises. If I were to plead anything in mitigation of the preposterous fancy that a bad design will sometimes claim to be a good and an expressly religious design, it would be the curious coincidence that it has been brought to its climax in these pages, in the days of the public examination of late Directors of a Royal British Bank. But, I submit myself to suffer judgment to go by default on all these counts, if need be, and to accept the assurance (on good authority) that nothing like them was ever known in this land.

Some of my readers may have an interest in being informed whether or no any portions of the Marshalsea Prison are yet standing. I did not know, myself, until the sixth of this present month, when I went to look. I found the outer front courtyard, often mentioned here, metamorphosed into a butter shop; and I then almost gave up every brick of the jail for lost. Wandering, however, down a certain adjacent “Angel Court, leading to Bermondsey,” I came to “Marshalsea Place:” the houses in which I recognised, not only as the great block of the former