Dombey and Son (Open University Set Book) [Paperback]

Charles Dickens (Author), Alan Horsman (Editor), Dennis Walder (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 12, 2001 | Series: Open University Set Book

Mr. Dombey's idealistic vision of his "Dombey and Son" shipping firm rests on the shoulders of his delicate son Paul. However, when the firm faces ruin, and Dombey's second marriage ends in disaster, it is his devoted daughter Florence, unloved and neglected, who comes to his aid.
This new edition contains Dickens's prefaces, his working plans, and all the original illustrations. The text is that of the definitive Clarendon edition, which is supplemented by a wide-ranging Introduction that highlights Dickens's sensitivity to the problems of his day, including those of family relationships, giving the novel added depth and relevance. The Notes and Bibliography have been substantially revised, extended, and updated.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1024 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2 edition (July 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019283990X
• ISBN-13: 978-0192839909
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,928,960 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Good Place To Start, November 12, 2004

By 

B. Morse (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dombey and Son (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Upon finishing Dombey and Son this morning, I thought back to the first Dickens work I ever read, which was David Copperfield, as a freshman in high school. Since then I have read many others, all with the same extensive cast of characters, side plots, etc.....

Except this one....which makes me question why it is not used as an introduction to the works of Dickens in school curriculums.

Dombey and Son, as a title, refers to the business which provides wealth, title, and position to Mr. Dombey, the aforementioned father. The 'son' refers to a succession of partners in that business, as well as an arrival at the opening of the book, which leads to the demise of Mrs. Dombey. But little Paul Dombey, sharing in his father's first and last names, joins an already present sibling in the world, his sister Florence.

Through the course of the novel, you realize that Dombey and Daughter are really the focus of this story....the fortunes and misfortunes that befall them both, the grievous neglect of one for the other, despite the efforts of the one neglected to reconcile...and a host of others that enter and exit from their lives.

But to recapture and jusitfy my initial point, this book is a marvelous starting point to read Dickens. It is far easier to keep track of the cast of the story, as it is more limited than other Dickens novels, while sharing the same length as most others. The story lines all really do feed into the central plot, and while the 'comedy' that I so enjoy in Dickens's prose is, admittedly, more limited here...it still is a highly enjoyable tale, and a great place to get your feet wet with one of history's best tale-weavers.

Although bittersweet and melancholy in tone, for the majority of the story, Dombey and Son holds up with Dickens's other novels as a true classic.

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ponderous portrait of pride, February 19, 2002

By 

Royce E. Buehler "figvine" (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dombey and Son (Open University Set Book) (Paperback)

If you love Dickens, you'll like this book. If you're not committed to the work and style of Boz, you may have a hard time getting through it. It gets off to a very slow start; it wears its didactic aims more prominently on its sleeve than most of Dickens' novels do (the preceding novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, having been a study of the perils of greed, this one is likewise a study on self-destroying pride.) Its heroine is so self-sacrificing, uncomplaining, sweet and forgiving that a modern reader is likely to feel the impulse to throttle her more than once. I found it the least satisfying of the dozen Dickens novels I've read, and have rounded its three and a half stars up rather than down, in honor of all the other good stuff he's produced.

All that being said, the book contains plenty of rewards for the persevering. Dombie's daughter, the over-gentle Florence, is more than made up for by a string of sharply drawn women who are nobody's wallflowers: the peppery Susan Nipper, the fearsome landlady Mac Stinger, and the magnificent second Mrs. Dombey, whose inflexible, bent pride puts steel to her husband's flint as the story gains headway halfway through. The plotting is intricate and tight, the peeks into Victorian hypocrisies (never far removed from our own) are trenchant, and we are treated to what is possibly the most riveting death scene in the whole oeuvre, which Dickens chose to present from the decedent's point of view in a stream of consciousness passage as remarkable for its technical daring as its sentimentality.

Throw in the superbly menacing, dentally impeccable villain, Mr Carker, and a rogue's gallery of lesser despicables from the streetwise dunce Chicken, to the blustering toady Joe Bagstock, to the second Mrs. Dombey's outrageous tin magnolia of a mother, and it's a book you'd be happy to stumble across in the cabin some snowbound weekend.

The Oxford World Classics edition has an extremely useful set of notes, which includes in full Dickens' initial outline of the work.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Dickens Ever, January 2, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Dombey & Son (Dickens Collection) (Paperback)

This is one of the best Dickens novels I have ever read. The character of Florence is so beautifully developed, and while I was reading, I got the sense that Dickens himself was in love with Florence. There's also that sense of mystery, in the dealings of Mrs. Brown and Alice, and their hatred of Mr. Carker. This book is full of surprises, and I was kept riveted to every single page. This is definitely a book that I would recommend to anyone, and one that I will be reading again and again.