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Little Dorrit

by Charles Dickens, John Holloway (Editor)

3.93 of 5 stars 3.93 · rating details · 15,453 ratings · 695 reviews

When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother's seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy's father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from t...more

Paperback, 912 pages

Published 1967 by Penguin Books (first published 1857)

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Feb 17, 2012 B0nnie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favourite-books

Little Dorrit is a wonderful comic novel. Within these gentle pages are:
-a severely brain damaged woman who was beaten and neglected by her alcoholic mother
-a bitter old lady who just sits in a room for 15 years
-evil twin brothers
-an abusive husband who beats and torments his wife
-spoiled twin sisters, one who kicks it early and is replaced by a resentful orphan
-an innocent man rotting away in prison for years
-children who are born and raised in prison
-a suicide
-a murder
-in articulo mortis m...more

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Jul 10, 2009 Christopher H. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: british-literature, favorites, victorian-literature, historical-fiction, read-in-2009, charles-dickens, my-western-canon, favorite-rereads

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens is arguably one of the very best fiction books I've read in my entire life. I would unhesitatingly recommend this book to anyone. It was captivating, engaging, and at times humorous, and at other times sad; with romance, mystery, and intrigue. Dickens' plotting is amazing, his characters intriguing, and his descriptions solidly place you in the midst of London in the Victorian Age in all social classes. The message and moral tone of this novel is so incredibly ap...more

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Jul 20, 2007 Stas' rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A forgotten classic, hidden among so many other fine works that Chuck produced. I laughed, I cried and I nearly peed myself because I refused to put the book down.

It has been clinically proven that those who find Dickens too maudlin or sentimental are either emotionally stunted or full-on cold hearted sociopaths. Clinically proven.

Not suprisingly, Kafka loved this book what with the Circumlocution Office and the strange almost alternate reality of Marshalsea Debtors Prison. If you have never re...more

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Jun 12, 2008 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classic, english-lit

For years I thought this book was some sort of a universal joke, because at the end of Evelyn Waugh's novel, A Handful of Dust, one of the characters ends up trapped in a jungle by a madman who forces the character to read Little Dorrit aloud — I figured this was clearly meant to be a fate worse than death. Turns out, however, that Little Dorrit was merely an appropriate choice because of its themes of imprisonment, delusion, and reversals of fortune. Ah ha!

Little Dorrit (the character) is the d...more

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Jun 02, 2011 Alasse rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: victorians-and-friends

I have a really close friend - let's call him Charlie. Charlie began college at 18, like most of us did. Then he sort of started drifting, and his friends began to suspect he wasn't sitting his exams. The years went by, and gradually they began to realize he wasn't even enrolling. He just avoided the issue, or made such an elaborate pretense of being terribly busy during exam season, they tacitly left the whole thing alone. To this day, he hasn't officially quit university or laid out any altern...more I have a really close friend - let's call him Charlie. Charlie began college at 18, like most of us did. Then he sort of started drifting, and his friends began to suspect he wasn't sitting his exams. The years went by, and gradually they began to realize he wasn't even enrolling. He just avoided the issue, or made such an elaborate pretense of being terribly busy during exam season, they tacitly left the whole thing alone. To this day, he hasn't officially quit university or laid out any alternative plans for his life - he's just frozen. But he's made such a good job of obliterating the issue, he firmly believes he's eventually finishing law school. He's 30 now. We talk on an almost daily basis, and I have never discussed this with him.

I thought a lot about Charlie while reading Little Dorrit.

I'm not going to dwell on the main themes in this novel. Firstly, because I have nothing to add that hasn't already been covered in the previous reviews. The imprisonment motif, the dysfunctional families, the criticism of Victorian society and of government incompetence - they're all there, and they're probably what the novel is about, mostly. But they didn't exactly surprise me - rather, those are topics one can always count on Dickens for covering in his, at the same time, sarcastic and empathic style. In this respect, the book delivers better than almost any Dickens I've read to date. The whole subplot concerning the fictional Circumlocution Office is borderline Kafkian, and the family melodrama gets dark. Like, really dark.

But that is not the novel I have read. Which is embarrassing, because it's the novel all of the scholars have read, and all of GR's reviewers too. Meaning what I'm going to say now is going to sound, really, really pretentious. Okay, here I come: that's not what Little Dorrit really talks about. *ducks*

I don't know if it was intentional on Dickens's part or just a result of his criticism of Victorian society, but if you pay close attention to the character development, you'll realize what I mean. Almost every main character in this novel (and a good portion of the secondary ones as well) are bent on deceiving themselves as methodically as possible. Sure, there are a couple of people here and there who pretend in front of other people, but they aren't believing their own lies. Still, pretty much everybody else is investing so much energy on self-deception, and making such a point of believing their own lies, I sometimes felt exhausted just watching them.

There's of course the Dorrit family, with their airs of self-importance and wounded pride, overcompensating for the fact that they've been penniless for the last 25 years. Flora Finching insists on behaving like the 15-year old she once was, in the hopes that her old lover will propose to her again. Arthur insists on shutting off his feelings for Minnie Gowan, even after it becomes obvious that he's feeling deeply disappointed - the whole subplot is told in the third person, in a way that strongly reminded me of a depersonalization episode once recounted to me by a schizophrenic patient. And on, and on, and on.

Of course I'm not claiming to know Dickens's mind better than the Harold Blooms of this world. But trust me - if you're at all interested in why people do what they do, you'll find Little Dorrit isn't just about bureaucracy and poverty. In fact, it might be that it's about the power of the human nature for believing its own lies, and how everyone else is just too polite to tell you to shut up.
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Sep 22, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, oxford-classics, pre-1900s, sassysassenachs, art-or-illustrated, voluminous

Having not fallen fully under the sway of Dickens’s longest, Bleak House, we’re back to the savagely impressive corkers with this satirical and tender effort from the Immortal Blighty Scribe (IBS—unfortunate acronym). On a less grandiose scale than the preceding tome, Little Dorrit is much quieter, funnier, more powerfully affecting novel throughout than BH. In two parts, Poverty & Riches, the novel charts the progress of Amy Dorrit, (the token spirit of purity and goodness), and her family...more

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Nov 14, 2007 James rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: newberry-library, fiction

It is a rather mixed bag of mystery and intrigue between characters both well-off and not. The theme of prisons and imprisonment permeates this book with the title character residing with her family in the infamous "Marshalsea" prison for the first part of the book. The main plot is focused on the efforts of Arthur Clennam to assist Little (Amy) Dorrit's family in paying their debts so as to escape the prison and Arthur's own quest to solve the mystery of his family & identity. The Dorrits s...more It is a rather mixed bag of mystery and intrigue between characters both well-off and not. The theme of prisons and imprisonment permeates this book with the title character residing with her family in the infamous "Marshalsea" prison for the first part of the book. The main plot is focused on the efforts of Arthur Clennam to assist Little (Amy) Dorrit's family in paying their debts so as to escape the prison and Arthur's own quest to solve the mystery of his family & identity. The Dorrits succeed in leaving the prison due to discovered inheritance. The novel moves on to the second part and advancement of the love interests of several characters along with new developments in the life of Arthur. One of Dickens most complicated tales, the novel has several "shady" characters that create difficult situations. Moreover Dickens demonstrates some of his most effective satire in the description of the Circumlocution Office and its administrators, the predatory Barnacles.
This novel exhibits some of the characteristic traits for which Dickens is famous, including a plethora of characters, atmospheric descriptions and a somewhat convoluted plot line. While exhibiting these traits it also has two of the most decent and truly good protagonists (if not hero and heroine) in all of the Dickens which I have read. That Arthur Clennam and Little Dorrit (Amy) finally join together in wedded bliss is a consummation not unexpected and certainly deserved. Arthur has survived his 'quest' for identity and understanding and while not entirely successful he has reached a point from which he can satisfactorily go forward with his life and with his Amy.
For this reader the novel was both satisfying and perturbing. The continual railing against the Circumlocution Office and skewering of debtors' prisons with the 'Marshalsea' was not convincing and the weakness of the plot undermined the quality of the novel. However, the fecundity of curious and wonderful characters who consistently charmed and challenged the reader with their psychological complexity helped to overcome all other weaknesses. And this is the great strength of Dickens as a novelist which he demonstrates again and again as he continued to increase his mastery of this literary form.
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Oct 31, 2012 Melissa (ladybug) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Charles Dickens Fans, Classic Book Lovers

Shelves: western-classics, fiction, classics, brain-pain, team-read, literature

I hadn't known that Charles Dickens' father had been imprisoned in the Marshalsea, at one time, when Dickens was a child. While reading this book is when I found out. This made the book much more realistic and interesting for me. Dickens was writing what he knew. This is what distinguishes between just a good book and a classic (which I can say this is a classic).

The summary found at Goodreads tells us that:

When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interes

...more

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May 05, 2011 Janice rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 19th-century, classics

I think I need a break from Dickens. Reading _Little Dorrit_ after _Dombey and Son_, and within months of finishing _Bleak House_ has made me frustrated with his ideal female character. He uses the phrase "active submission" to describe Amy Dorrit, but it could be equally applied to Esther or Florence, characters whose main virtue is waiting without complaint for their objects of devotion to treat them properly, and for their lives to be less miserable. _Little Dorrit_ and _Dombey and Son_ both...more

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Oct 20, 2009 Vicky rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

Once in a while as you read this book you may find yourself humming, "The girl that I marry a doll I can carry must be." But if you can get over the impossibly selfless and diminutive heroine (Dickens's idea of the ideal woman was apparently the woman who could almost make herself disappear), this novel is splendid. The style is dazzling, the characters unforgettable, the humor side-splitting. (Yes, there's humor, though in general it's not one of Dickens's merrier reads.) The usual Dickensian s...more

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May 25, 2009 Kimber rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

How I loved this book. Dickens is amazing, although, I admit, he is incredibly verbose in this book! But the thing is, I ENJOYED every minute of the verbosity! His sentences are just crammed with meaning. Every paragraph is a sermon on human behavior. He paints each character as a particular human trait. For instance, the character in this book who is torn between being good or evil is a twisted man, literally. His body leans to the side, his head bends over, even his mouth is rather hideously t...more

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Jan 17, 2011 Yulande Lindsay rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Little Dorrit will never be my favourite Dickens novel. That is reserved for David Copperfield, Bleak House and the Pickwick Papers, so far. The problem I had, was that I could not fully empathise with the main characters, Clenham and Little Dorrit. My problem I think, was the fact that they were so...good! And not really in an interesting way. Little Dorrit is so self effacing she was practically invisible. I realise that she represents an ideal, but it is an ideal that leads to tedious reading...more

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May 02, 2009 bookyeti rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own, classics, favorites, 2009-reading-list, reviewed

1820's rags-to-riches tale, Dickens style

Where most books develop one puzzle piece at a time, Dickens' novels are comprised of large pieces that are gradually deconstructed into tiny individual parts, scattered with wild abandon, and then slowly reconstructed methodically until the final puzzle is complete. Little Dorrit is no exception to this Dickensian template.

A sardonic social lampoon and a searing satire at bureaucracy’s expense, Little Dorrit serves as Dickens’ analysis of society at the...more 1820's rags-to-riches tale, Dickens style

Where most books develop one puzzle piece at a time, Dickens' novels are comprised of large pieces that are gradually deconstructed into tiny individual parts, scattered with wild abandon, and then slowly reconstructed methodically until the final puzzle is complete. Little Dorrit is no exception to this Dickensian template.

A sardonic social lampoon and a searing satire at bureaucracy’s expense, Little Dorrit serves as Dickens’ analysis of society at the time and yet still retains a quiet dignity and undercurrent of a more psychological application.

This Dickensian classic explores imprisonment of both the literal and symbolic genre. Broken into two separate books – “Poverty” and “Riches” – the novel explores life from two different sides of London’s dreaded Marshalsea debtor prison’s walls.

Upon Arthur Clennam’s return to England after several years abroad in China, he meets and develops a benevolent interest in Amy Dorrit, the quiet diminutive seamstress of his embittered mother. Born within the Marshalsea prison walls, “Little Dorrit” as she is affectionately dubbed, patiently cares for her aging father, William Dorrit - a gentleman of past grandeur, long incarcerated for a debt he cannot repay. As Clennam becomes further acquainted with the Dorrits, he realizes his own mother holds a long-held secret regarding the Clennam's connection with the Dorrit family. Arthur also recalls mysterious fragmentary utterances by his dying father, desperately begging him to ‘make things right’ with the Dorrit family, for reasons unspoken. In light of this, Clennam takes it upon himself to investigate further into the imprisoned family’s history. It’s not long before he discovers that the dark secrets of the past stretch far beyond the prison walls to affect the lives of many, including his own.

As with any Dickens’ novel, it wouldn’t seem complete without its typical array of capricious stereotypical characters, from the likes of the excitable snorting rent-collector Mr. Pancks; the cranky crooked manservant Mr. Flintwinch; to the taciturn Flora Finching; the bureaucratic Barnacles in the unscrupulous Circumlocution Office; and the blatantly villainous but charismatic Monsieur Rigaud (with no less than three French aliases), whose hooked nose ventures over his mustache every time he utters a sinister laugh – a frequent occurrence.

Still, Little Dorrit defies categorization. Simultaneously a tragedy, comedy, social commentary, satire and mystery, it is a puzzle that, when solved, resolves itself to be an allegory of love itself, and the emphasis of personal responsibility. The novel is also a testimony to that rarest strength of character which ultimately remains untainted by status and situation in life, whether it be riches or poverty. It is observable to anyone familiar with Dickens' biography that the book draws intimately on the author's own troubled childhood, when his own father was imprisoned for three months in the Marshalsea debtor’s prison.

Granted, without rapt concentration, readers will easily be lost in the exuberant sprawl of its 800+ pages, but will find that it is well worth the effort.(less)

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Jul 25, 2008 Eddie Watkins rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was reading a book of conversations with the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead and in it he actually said that Dickens was a hack writer, and I think back in the 20's or 30's when these conversations took place that might've been the consensus opinion.

But what malarkey!
What balderdash!
What unmitigated posh and drivel!

Yes, his characters are more often than not cartoonish.
Yes, he can ooze sentimentality from even his schnozz pores. Yes, saccharine notions of love and loyalty were the air...more

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Zepp It's fightin' words when someone says something about Dickens the Hack getting paid by the word, about his characters being one-dimensional romanticiz...more
Jul 27, 2008 07:06am

Dennis Fischman What does it say about me that Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Jane Austen, and Karl Marx are among my favorite writers? I guess I'm just a 19th-century...more
Apr 24, 2009 08:04am

Jul 15, 2009 Allison rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It had been so long since I'd read Dickens that I had forgotten how great he was. This novel portrays a crowd of characters surrounding Little Dorrit, a shy young woman who grew up in debtor's prison. I began reading this after watching and loving a Masterpiece Theater production of the book. The original is insightful, funny, satirical and amazingly fresh. A very long novel but a wonderful read.

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Dec 25, 2008 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dickens' most challenging and troubling book. Interesting to re-read it while Wall Street is falling apart for some of the same reasons: vastly over-leveraged capital and Ponzi schemes.

Although it's customary to write about Dickens' anger towards the debtors' prisons, I've always found Dickens' depiction of Marshalsea Prison somewhat soft-focused. I wouldn't want to live there, but it could be (and certainly was) much worse. What I find chilling is the way William Dorritt manipulates social conv...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Gemma rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The scenes at Mrs Finching's home are among the funniest and most accurate I've ever encountered in literature, while the starkness of the opening descriptions of London will break your heart. There really are few novelists like Dickens, sadly.

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Feb 09, 2009 Magdalena added it · review of another edition

Though I’ve purchased a number of CD audios for my children over the past ten years, I’d never really seen myself as an audio book girl. I’m such fan of text on the page, that I didn’t really think that audio would appeal to me. But you can’t read everywhere (while driving or jogging for example), and I was pleased to be proven wrong. Listening to an audio like this is like a cross between reading an engrossing book, and watching a theatrical performance. Once I began listening, I was hooked.

The...more Though I’ve purchased a number of CD audios for my children over the past ten years, I’d never really seen myself as an audio book girl. I’m such fan of text on the page, that I didn’t really think that audio would appeal to me. But you can’t read everywhere (while driving or jogging for example), and I was pleased to be proven wrong. Listening to an audio like this is like a cross between reading an engrossing book, and watching a theatrical performance. Once I began listening, I was hooked.

The story opens with Arthur Clennam, recently returned from twenty years of life in the Orient, to be with his dying father. Arthur’s father hands Arthur a ring, inscribed with the letters "DNF": “do not forget”, and tells Arthur to give it to his mother, reminding her that they had committed a crime. Whether or not you're familiar with the book, this kind of drama immediately pulls in the listener. The story continues in the same way, moving evocatively between dramatic mystery, love and desire, loss and discovery. Of course Dickens’ original was, like much of his work, a serial novel, so listening to small ‘acts’ with the inevitable, and often reluctant limitation of arrival, was probably as akin to the original as reading an entire novel would have been. It certainly made 45 minute journeys to the office more pleasurable. Listening to an audio is a richer experience than watching television. Just as with a written book, the listener is still free to be participant in the image making process. Though the language is, at times, a little old fashioned as any 19th Century novel would be, the acting is so powerful, that it’s easy to suspend judgment and accept all the “dear, dear one” exclamations.

Of course much of the story is utterly classic, and this isn't lost in the audio. The circumlocution office for example, portrays, with humour and pith, the bureaucratic nightmare of officialdom and Civil Service. The cheerful Ferdinand Barnicle, whom Arthur comes upon as he tries to find out why William Dorrit was imprisoned, is a treasure of a character. The various reversals of fortune form an intricate plot device which is handled masterly and subtly, moving from the big reversals between Arthur and Amy through many more delicate smaller reversals: between Amy’s sister Fanny and her suitor Edmund Sparkler; between Arthur and Daniel Doyce; and between the various inmates at Marshalsea prison to name a few.

The story is narrated by Sir Ian McKellen as Dickens, and he’s a cool beautifully spoken guide through the drama. The rest of the characters are also well played, from the soft spoken sanity of Julian Wadham’s Arthur, to the sweet ernest Amy of Jasmine Hyde. The sound of Dickens’ London is well conveyed, and the whole story is presented in a way that calls to mind the story’s overall timelessness. This is the perfect novel for audio. It’s full of humour, sometimes so outlandish that I often laughed out loud in my car. At the same time, there is pathos, terror, excitement, and real joy. Both Arthur and Amy in particular are richly drawn, and the reader is given a deep understanding of these characters and their mutual attraction: from their painful childhoods, to the way in which they struggle to fit in the ‘dog-eat-dog world’ of Victorian England. There is much, of necessity, that has been removed from the novel to make this audio version. The love story is more pronounced, and various crimes committed, from the Merdle's fraud, a variety of blackmails, to the crimes of the Clennams, are all given fairly short shrift. But this audio isn’t intended to be a replacement for reading, as an alternative genre entirely. For sheer entertainment alone, it would be hard to beat the relaxation and engagement of listening to such a well done adaptation. For anyone who has to spend time in a vehicle or engaged in an activity that doesn't allow for a book in hand, this audio is one which will transform the journey into one of pure pleasure.(less)

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Apr 02, 2013 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: british-authors, classics

Corruption; inept officialdom; capitalism, the pretensions of social class and status: few elements of Victorian life seem to escape Dickens' scrutiny in Little Dorrit.

Published in monthly instalments between 1855 and 1857, first reactions from the critics were not very favourable. They completely overlooked the social critique element and focused their attention instead on what they considered an unnecessarily incoherent plot and insubstantial, two-dimensional figures. Fortunately the mid twen...more Corruption; inept officialdom; capitalism, the pretensions of social class and status: few elements of Victorian life seem to escape Dickens' scrutiny in Little Dorrit.

Published in monthly instalments between 1855 and 1857, first reactions from the critics were not very favourable. They completely overlooked the social critique element and focused their attention instead on what they considered an unnecessarily incoherent plot and insubstantial, two-dimensional figures. Fortunately the mid twentieth century saw a revival of interest in the novel and a significant shift in attitude. In fact attitudes shifted so far that George Bernard Shaw claimed Little Dorrit was a more seditious text than Marx's Das Kapital while George Orwell declared that "in Little Dorrit, Dickens attacked English institutions with a ferocity that has never since been approached."

Much of Dickens' ire in Little Dorrit is focused on government bureaucracy. He brings it to life with the wonderfully imaginative invention of the Circumlocution Office. It's a government department run entirely it seems by the incompetent and the inept (ring any bells???). Its sole purpose is to frustrate and obstruct anyone who has the temerity to ask for information or assistance. Forms need to be filled in just to request permission to fill in more forms to ask for an appointment.(the Soviets learned a thing or two from the Circumlocution Office methinks).

Some of his greatest anger is directed at debtors' prisons such as the notorious Marshalsea in which people who owed money were imprisoned until they repaid their debts. It was an impossible situation because they were not allowed to work so had to rely on family or friends to help pay bills and to provide food and clothing. Such becomes the fate of William Dorrit who moves his entire family into the Marshalsea when he becomes a bankrupt. His youngest daughter Amy (the Little Dorrit of the title) is born within its walls, becoming a true child of the Marshalsea.

But even in prison the appearance of gentility and the gradations of class and status must be maintained. The Marshalsea inhabitants refer to themselves as “collegians” rather than prisoners; Papa Dorrit pretends ignorance about the fact his daughters go out to work every day to put food on the table, and openly solicits financial gifts from visitors, masks their true nature by calling them “tributes” and 'testimonials'. As his status within the prison rises and he becomes the longest-serving resident, so his consciousness of his status increases, going into orbit when he is released upon discovery that he is in fact a very wealthy man.

What Dickens shows is the personal cost of such esteem for one's position in life. Mr Dorrit is so blinkered by his sense of his own importance that he fails to connect with the one person who loves him without question - his daughter Amy. Though she has loved him without question for decades, cared for him and undergone personal suffering so that he would be spared, he does not recognise the debt he owes her. Instead he subjects her to criticism over petty mistakes and castigates her when she doesn't wholeheartedly welcome and adopt the trappings of the family's new-found wealth. Does he repent on his deathbed as characters do in so many novels? I won't spoil the plot by disclosing that; you'll just have to read the novel yourself.

The Dorrits are a far cry from the epitome of the happy loving families found in Dickens's earlier works. None of the families in Little Dorrit actually fit that particular description being neither loving nor happy. They're all rather dysfunctional in fact. When Arthur Clenhome, one of the book's good guys, returns to London from China where he ran the family business for twenty years he gets as much of a welcome from his mother as if he'd just returned from a weekend in Brighton.

Like most of Dickens' big novels, the plot does require attention to keep all the threads intact but this book isn't anywhere as complicated as Bleak House. It also relies on a remarkable series of coincidences - the first two characters we meet in a prison in France not only turn up again in London many many chapters later and somehow manage to play key roles in the plot. But it wouldn't be Dickens without coincidence would it. Nor would it be Dickens without a wildly extravagant female character. Just as Dombey and Son has the dippy Miss Lucretia Tox, and Martin Chuzzlewit has the drunken nurse Sarah Gamp, in Little Dorrit Dickens serves up the garrulous Flora Finching to entertain with her gushing and breathless simpering talk of nothing in particular. A brilliant invention.

So in case you haven't twigged by now, yes I did enjoy this book. And yes I would definitely read it again.(less)

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Mar 01, 2013 Mark rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Good god, was this a snoozer. I love Charles Dickens like nobody's business, but this book was about 600 pages longer than it needed to be. If he was getting paid by the page, I'm not hatin', but it seemed to drag on and on and on without really going anywhere.

Little Dorrit herself is a really boring character because she is a meek little Mary Sue whose entire personality consists of being weak, submissive, and a pushover to everybody else.

The plot is kind of vague and poorly defined and goes...more

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Feb 26, 2013 Federica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, narrativa

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 05, 2012 Belen added it · review of another edition

Si hay algo que me gusta es ir leyendo sin orden ni concierto aparente. Como no puedo leer El Bello Verano, cojo otro de Pavese pero ando un poco atascada, así que siguiendo el caos que me lleva de un libro a otro resulta que recibí la señal de que releyera algo de Dickens.
Tengo un proyector fabuloso que por la confusión de un amigo recibió la sugerencia de llamarse cien en vez de cine. Cien es un nombre raro para cualquier cosa pero inevitablemente recordé ¡Absalón, Absalón! cuyo protagonista c...more

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Feb 02, 2012 Alice rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 12, 2012 Joanna Sundby rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, classics

I read this book when I was 12. I never cried so hard, and ached so much or loved any heroine Like Amy Dorrit. It wasn't until I became an adult that I understood that Dickens had nailed the character of the dutiful daughter who is caregiver to her parent, and he had described my life for me. The debtors prison, the Marshalsea, is such a perfect metaphor for the debt such a parent owes. The hubris of the newly released and wealthy Mr Dorrit, mid book, is so typical of the gratitude the child get...more

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Jan 20, 2011 Chanwarnick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Okay, I'll say up front that the five stars is how I rate my experience of the book and not actually the book. By that I mean that the novel isn't very well wrought -- it meanders a lot, and there are some parts and some characters that feel wooden -- but it was such a breath of fresh air to read about characters who had integrity and virtue that I loved it in spite of its flaws. And Dickens is FUNNY, or at least he is in Little Dorrit. The last time I read Dickens was maybe five years ago, Grea...more

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Nov 07, 2010 Faith Justice rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, given-away

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I posted an extensive blog. Here's the beginning:

Every now and then, I turn back to the classics and remind myself why they are “classic.” Charles Dickens has always been a favorite of mine, but I had never read Little Dorritt. I picked up a Wordsworth edition (over 800 pages with introduction, preface and footnotes) which sat on my “To Be Read” shelf for several months before I plucked up the energy to tackle it. Once I started, I couldn’t put it down.

The story is simple: a few good souls strug...more

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Apr 27, 2009 Miss Clark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anglo-phile, classics

Well, it was far from Dickens' finest. In fact, it is one of my least favorite of his. The plot is vague, at best, and by story's end, I had many questions left unanswered. It was incredibly frustrating to not be able to really understand what was going on. For instance, what exactly happened to Arthur's mother?

The characters were pretty bland this time round. Most are selfish and hypocritical, caricatures of one failing or another, some were quite memorable, like Pancks and Cavoletto and the P...more

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booklady Whoops, I meant the "The Woman in White"! Ha! I'm a bookLADY and sometimes use the words interchangeably... ;)

"Jewel in the Crown" is about the end o...more
updated May 05, 2009 05:45pm

Jacqueline Wow, thanks for the recommendations, booklady! I LOVE most anything British out there, so all these sound like a must-see! I think I actually do have...more
updated May 10, 2009 07:10pm

May 27, 2011 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, guardian-1000, kindle-baby, own

Ooh Charlie, you manipulative little bugger...

It seemed to take me forever to read the first half of this book - up until the Dorrit's left Venice - mostly because whenever I picked it up I flew into a temper almost immediately, and whenever I put it down I had to battle with myself to start it again, what with virtually everybody inside it being so ruddy hateful. At times (mostly whenever dealing with the bloody Barnacles and the sodding Circumlocution Office) there was also a desperate need of...more

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Jul 31, 2011 Christopher F. added it · review of another edition

This comes close to joining the top ranks--Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend--except for some serious problems in characterization: most notably the focus on the angelic maudlin central figure, who is reminiscent of Little Nell from The Old Curiosity Shop (of whom Oscar Wilde wrote that anyone who cries reading the description of her death must have a heart of stone). Secondly, for the attempt to make us feel sorry at the end for Mrs. Clennam, the puritanical harpy whose self-righteous moralizin...more

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Feb 24, 2010 Meghan Cooper rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Advanced readers with lots of time.

Shelves: classics, read-in-2009

Little Dorrit is admittedly the most difficult book I have ever read. The language is so hard to understand through out the story and to actually take any of the story or words in you have to concentrate fully. This story took me a while to read becasue of the fact that I never had time to put my full attention in to it! When I could read Little Dorrit properly I enjoyed it so much, the storyline is so excellent and the characters are so funny! It was so hard but so fun to do at the same time. I...more

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About Charles Dickens

A prolific 19th Century author of short stories, plays, novellas, novels, fiction and non-fiction; during his lifetime Dickens became known the world over for his remarkable characters, his mastery of prose in the telling of their lives, and his depictions of the social classes, morals and values of his times. Some considered him the spokesman for the poor, for he definitely brought much awarenes...more

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“[Credit is a system whereby] a person who can't pay, gets another person who can't pay, to guarantee that he can pay.” — 62 people liked it

“While the flowers, pale and unreal in the moonlight, floated away upon the river; and thus do greater things that once were in our breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to the eternal sea.” — 12 people liked it

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