Little Dorrit (New Oxford Illustrated Dickens) (Hardcover)

by Charles Dickens (Author), Lionel Trilling (Introduction)

Editorial Reviews

Review
?One of the most significant works of the nineteenth century.??Lionel Trilling -- Review --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review
“One of the most significant works of the nineteenth century.”—Lionel Trilling --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 858 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 22, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192545124
• ISBN-13: 978-0192545121
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,081,404 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth a Journey, October 22, 2004

By	Russael BK Johanys (Seoul, Korea) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Little Dorrit (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)

Among the reasons to come to earth must surely be the chance to read this novel. Shaw called this novel a masterpiece among masterpieces. My opinion is that this novel is the greatest of the sixteen. It is less bland than Bleak House, more poignant than Copperfield. I started it desultorily, distracted greatly by events in my life. But gradually as I read it dawned on me that sentence by sentence Dickens was here at his most trenchant. I began to be charmed by the characters, some of the greatest in his oeuvre. For all the darkness in the conception--a girl born and raised in debtor's prison--Little Dorrit is a wonderful character. Arthur Clennam is a real man. I adore Flora's deranged speech and her tenderness. Fanny is a delight! And there are Doyce and Pancks--and the Meagles and Pet and Tattycoram--and there are so many secrets! And isn't Blandois the precursor of Fosco? Oh, I could go on. To the Circumlocution Office and Barnacles and Merdle - and Afferty and Flintwich and Mrs. Clennam--such a wonderful feast of characters--with the Marshallsea hovering over all.

How well Dickens uses dialogue to identify character; how amusing are their tics. The characters fall into strata. The main of them, characterized by Clennam, Doyce, and Pancks, are at the level of small businessmen, tradesmen. Below them are the destitutes. A little above them are Mrs. Clennam, Casby, the Meagles. And high above them the Merdles, Gowans, and the like. The novel finds its way at the lower levels--it's a novel of the lower middle class and the lower class and the poor--and down there is so much life and love and devotion. It was strong medicine for me, cognitively dissonant, for Little Dorrit to love with such devotion. And Clennam loves her so deeply though he had no love in his life to that point. Where did he find such love in himself?

Dickens does not just give the action. Unlike so many other writers (almost all), he lets the characters be themselves, revealing the plot from time to time as they get to it, but seldom hurrying. They are being themselves and leading their lives--of course caught up in the great machine of the novel; it's as though Dicken's characters' clothes get caught in the huge, creaking machinery of his plots which then tugs them along, or perhaps grinds them up...

The novel is too full of words. It's verbose. Many times I could not follow the sense. It's labored. There are plot shifts just for the sake of changing the experiment.

But as I finished the novel a benediction fell upon me--a moment that cannot be put into words.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great work long unnoticed, June 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Little Dorrit (Oxford Paperbacks) (Paperback)

"Bleak House" may have been masterfully managed, but I preferred this tense tale of poverty, riches and the parasitic class that breeds both. It is as cautionary a tale as the former: the role of the machinery of government and capitalist class on the lives of all under them has never been so powerfully depicted. Mr Merdle was based on a real person, a Sadlier who killed himself in Hyde Park when he caused the Tipperary Bank to fail. Amy Dorrit is to be preferred to Esther Summerson as a heroine in not being so off-puttingly and impossibly sweet. Dickens' mastery of plot is such to create an exciting mystery and a rich interweaving of character and plot that kept me up all night unravelling the puzzle.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Keeping up with Masterpiece Theater' Dickens, April 15, 2009

By	Barbara Robinson (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Little Dorrit (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)

I have been reading or rereading Dickens in the last few weeks, and I have been amazed at the humor, which I never discovered when I read them at school. I really enjoyed Oliver Twist and David Coperfield, but Little Dorrit is the most difficult so far. There are so many characters, and so much action that with a lesser author I would have given up long ago, because I would never have kept all the characters straight. Dickens characterization is excellent, and I never wonder, 'Now who's that?' But to find the humor, one has to read every word, and I have begun to speed read, and this is not the way to enjoy Dickens. Perhaps one has to read Dickens at least three times, once to get to the end, once to understand all the plots and sub-plots, and finally for the details. Getting a chapter a month was probably the best way to read it.

Reading little Dorrit takes determination and time, but the characters are real and the plots are complex. I am further along in the book than Masterpiece Theater, and while I was watching the last episode, I was sure I'd already seen it. I guess this says how good the TV series is. And it is particularly appropriate to read during the present economic crisis as it deals with money, making it, inheriting it, losing it, owing it. and a nineteenth century Madoff.