I read this book some time ago and it's still one of my favourite classic stories.

For a long time I languished in the supreme belief that 'Bleak House' was the highest caliber product of Dickens when it came to his 'really big' works. 'Bleak House' is renowned in English literary criticism as--gasp-the #1 novel of the English language. And I too, thought so.

But the difference which makes 'Dorrit' better are these: (1) humor. The book is riotously funny. (2) Better females. The women in 'Bleak House' are melodramatic, traumatic, and oh-so-serious. None of them are really lovable. But Amy Dorrit is adorable! (3) Arthur Clenman. For once, Dickens gives us a fully-fledged, sensitive male character to whom any regular guy can identify with. He is not lurid, overly-virtuous, overly-heroic, or exaggerated.

Anyway. This novel is one of Dickens' career best. It displays the caliber of writing you can always see from Dickens when he's really 'in-the-zone'.

I would match it against any of his other works except 'A Tale of Two Cities' which is in a class of its own. But 'Dorrit' vs 'Copperfield', or 'Expectations', or 'Nickelby', or 'Mutual Friend' or 'Pickwick'...or even 'Bleak'(!) certainly 'Dorrit' blows them away. Its astounding but so. This is one case where you can't listen to the critics: no matter how much one respects 'Bleak'; 'Dorrit' is a narrative which will bring exuberation and good cheer to your life.

Every Dickens novel has fun villains to despise--this one has them too-- but for once here is a novel with humor and sweetness, and characters you can really take to your heart.

Little Dorrit has now risen to the top of my Dickens tower; it’s my favorite of his books unless or until another unseats it. This story has all Dickens essentials: the vast disparity of life in Victorian London, with the rich quite fabulously wealthy and the poor in workhouses; nature as a character beautifully described; a wonderful cast of characters ranging from the saintly Little Dorrit to the confusing Flora to the personified “Bosom” of Mrs. Merdle to the villain Rigaud and villainous Miss Wade and of course Pancks with the hair, Affery with her apron over her head. And too many more. There is the central Arthur Clennam, kind and intelligent but also obtuse, and his wheelchair bound termagant mother. Each of these receive the typical Dickens treatment where a visual portrait is painted with words.

The plot is huge and takes in much happening in England of the early 19th century. There is a picture of the wealthy and their lives, the poor and their lack of a future, and the grind of those who manage to work. There is fraud, theft, murder, government inaction (in the extreme), but there is also much humor. Dickens manages to find the humor in the human condition and there’s much to be found during this tale too.

I enjoyed reading this book with a group at the Dickensians where we read one chapter per day and discuss as we read. That does add so much to the reading experience. I’m already looking forward to the next book.

A beautifully designed story with many lovable and many despicable characters.

If only Dickens didn't almost always place at the heart of his novels the adored meek little girl woman. She's rarely the shining moral light he wants her to be. Because she's created with too much sentimentality. Sentimentality is his other problem. If only he had seen more worth in trees and less in pretty garden flowers. But his novels always end in a domesticated garden with pretty flowerbeds and trimmed hedgerows and lawns. I had to abandon David Copperfield because for me the onslaughts of whimsy ruined all the brilliant stuff.

That said, I had a whale of a time with Little Dorrit. Yes, I wanted to shake Little Dorrit herself at times and found myself more supportive of her flawed and not entirely nice sister but this novel is so brilliantly put together, features so many masterpieces of character study and is such a fabulous biting and very funny satire of the ruling class, the privileged elite, which has lost none of its bite and relevance, that it's a joyous read from beginning to end. I've fallen in love with Charles Dickens again.

3.5 stars rounded up.

Finished the last 1/3 of the novel listening to the audio narrated by Simon Vance (aka Robert Whitfield). He did such a fabulous job, I almost wish that I had listened to the entire book.

The best new-to-me story I’ve read in years. I can’t believe I’ve missed out for this long… Dickens’ characters are unmatched. I loved Arthur and Little Dorrit, shed a few tears, realized I wasn’t alone, and saw a little hope on the horizon. Please read this one if you haven’t already.

Something contemporary about a prison where debtors must stay until they repay their debts, yet are unable to actually work. Sounds like something out of lockdown-era madness, a reminder that stupid, mendacious or evil politicians aren’t just a phenomenon of our own age. Also of note is the sinister feminist Miss Wade, a woman whose soul has hardened to a brittle sliver of glass.

As with all Dickens’ books, the impressions left behind are more distinct than the sometimes maudlin feeling imparted by the immediate imbibition of his prose. You can see the whole art afterwards, an etching out of light and shadow, like the darkling illustrations by ‘Phiz’ which accompany it.

Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens

Little Dorrit is a novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in serial form between 1855 and 1857.

It satirises the shortcomings of both government and society, including the institution of debtors' prisons, where debtors were imprisoned, unable to work, until they repaid their debts. The prison in this case is the Marshalsea, where Dickens's own father had been imprisoned.

Dickens is also critical of the lack of a social safety net, the treatment and safety of industrial workers, as well the bureaucracy of the British Treasury, in the form of his fictional "Circumlocution Office".

In addition he satirises the stratification of society that results from the British class system.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دوازدهم ماه نوامبر سال 1974میلادی

عنوان: دوریت کوچک؛ چارلز دیکنز؛ مترجم: محمد قاضی، رضا عقیلی؛ تهران، جاویدان، 1343؛ در 364ص؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده 19م

عنوان: دوریت کوچک؛ چارلز دیکنز؛ مترجم: فریده تیموری؛ تهران، ماد، 1370؛ در دوجلد؛ جلد دو در 288ص؛

عنوان: دوریت کوچک؛ چارلز دیکنز؛ مترجم: فریده تیموری؛ تهران، سمیر، 1388؛ در727ص؛

چکیده: داستان این رمان، نوشته ی نویسنده ی سرشناس «انگلیسی»، «چارلز دیکنز»، درباره ی رفتارهای موجود در ادارات دولتی آن روزگاران است، که در آنزمان، از نظر کندی کار، و تنبلی کارکنان، مورد اعتراض مردمان، بوده است؛ «ویلیام دوریت» در پی عدم اجرای قراردادی، که با یکی از ادارات امضا کرده، به زندان گزمه ها میافتد، و آنقدر انجا میماند، که به (پدر زندان گزمه ها) نامدار میشود؛ ایام حبس او، با فداکاریهای دختر کوچکش (امی) یا همان «دوریت کوچک»، تسکین مییابد؛ «آرتور کلن نم» نیز مردی است، که به خانواده ی «دوریت» یاری میکند؛ پس از مدتی «امی» به او علاقمند میشود؛ اما علاقه، نخست دوسویه نیست؛ با تغییر ناگهانی سرنوشت، «ویلیام دوریت»، وارث ثروت کلانی میشود، و «آرتور کلن نم» نیز، همان روزها، برای سفته های بی اعتبارش، به زندان گزمه ها میافتد؛ این موضوع رویدادهایی را، به دنبال دارد، که در ادامه ی داستان بازگو میشود

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 18/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 18/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

qual maraviglia... Dickens poteva intitolare il romanzo "Marshalsea"

la più grande menzogna della storia della letteratura è aver detto che Dickens è uno scrittore per ragazzi (ma credo che sia una particolarità tutta italiana)... moccia è uno scrittore per ragazzi, la rowling è una scrittrice per ragazzi, e potrei andare avanti... ma Dickens scrittore per ragazzi è una puttanata olimpica

”When We Lived at Henley, Barnes’s Gander Was Stole by Tinkers.”

[There might be some spoilers in the following text!]

This is one of the few sentences that are uttered by Mr. F.’s Aunt, an intimidating old lady who has the habit of throwing enigmatic sentences into people’s conversations when they least expect it, and I must say that this is one of my favourite sentences in Dickens’s novel Little Dorrit, just as Mr. F.’s Aunt is one of my favourite characters. This sentence is wonderfully whimsical and, containing a world of unsolved questions – Who was Barnes? How did he bear the loss of his gander? Was it a valuable gander? Were the tinkers ever brought to justice? –, it is a brilliant example of the fertility of Dickens’s imagination. It has nothing to do with the major theme of the novel – at least, not as far as I can make it out – but it shows how Dickens’s vivid imagination can spark off his readers’ imagination.

Little Dorrit, like many of Dickens’s later novels, is a paradigm of literary wealth, abounding in sub-plots and a host of characters that are all, as will eventually become clear, linked with each other, and it shows how Dickens skilfully interweaves all these different odds and ends with each other. The story focuses on middle-aged Arthur Clennam, who has been staying in China with his father, and who, after the father’s demise, comes back to London, suspecting that his parents are hiding a dark secret in that they have wronged somebody. His Calvinist and Sabbatharian mother, however, indignantly disclaims this idea, which makes Arthur relinquish any connection with the family business as he cannot help thinking that there is some family guilt that even haunts his stern and self-righteous mother. Why else should she patronize Amy Dorrit, a timid seamstress, and actively refuse to make any inquiries about Little Dorrit’s family connections – as though she feared she would learn something she might not want to know. Does she not know that Little Dorrit was born in the Marshalsea, the infamous debtors’ prison, where her father William Dorrit has been locked up for years? Strangely intrigued with Little Dorrit’s self-forbearance, Arthur follows her into the prison and makes the acquaintance of William Dorrit, who enjoys dubious fame as the “Father of the Marshalsea”, due to the length of time he has been confined to the place and who lives on whatever the other prisoners leave him as “testimonials”. In fact, he is a self-important scrounger. Unable to take his fate into his own hands, Mr. Dorrit finds his circumstances change, though, when it comes to light that he is the rightful heir to a vast fortune. All of a sudden, Mr. Dorrit is keen on moving in “Society”, and his youngest daughter, who has been his only support in times of need, is now short of an embarrassment to him. But time will tell whether his newly-found wealth is as reliable as his daughter Amy.

In Little Dorrit, Dickens confronts his readers with a variety of prisons. The novel’s opening chapter is set in a French prison – the description of the depressing Marseilles summer not falling much behind the famous London fog scene in Bleak House –, where we make the acquaintance of Rigaud, a cold-blooded murderer, and the second chapter sees some fellow travellers in quarantine. Most prominent, however, is the Marshalsea Prison, in which Dickens’s own father had been put for debt, and whose corrupting influence is hauntingly described – Dickens coins the telling phrase “prison rot” – using the example of Mr. Dorrit’s slow moral deterioration over the years. There are also other forms of imprisonment, though: Mrs. Clennam’s self-deceiving moral arrogance is illustrated by the fact that she is wheelchair-bound and has not left her room for years, and then there is the Circumlocution Office – Dickens’s satirical jab at inefficient bureaucracy –, whose sole purpose seems to be to forestall things from being done, which makes the country a prison for innovation, creativity and improvement.

Even a release from prison does not necessarily lead to freedom, as is shown in the case of William Dorrit, whose ludicrously pompous behaviour hardly conceals his insecurity. Again and again, he suspects his servants of knowing about his ignominious past and to be making fun of him, and so he displays the constant nervousness and pretentiousness of the social upstart. He basks in the glory of being seen with the Capitalist Mr. Merdle, who will, however, prove a fraud of the meanest kind, and tries to justify his claim to respectability by offering marriage to his daughters’ governess Mrs. General, whose philosophy of Prism and Prunes simply consists in limiting your conversation to “pleasant”, i.e. insipid, subjects. Mrs. General is a master-veneeress, and therefore an example of the second major motif of the novel: Deception, and the will to keep up appearances. Little Dorrit is full of hypocrites and frauds. In fact, it presents High Society as a breeding ground for deception and make-belief. The fraudulent Capitalist Merdle is like a Golden Calf around which Society’s dignitaries perform their obsequious dance. His wife is described as a Bosom dedicated to the display of jewellery. The Barnacle clan, in whose hands the Circumlocution Office rests, are experts at proving the usefulness of their institution by pointing out all the paper it produces – as you might have noticed, Dickens addresses current problems with the Merdle and the Barnacle plots. Mrs. Clennam hides her spite and her revengefulness behind the mask of religion and duty as much as Mr. Casby, a real estate owner, hides his avariciousness behind a placid exterior. The arch-villain Rigaud constantly refers to himself as a true gentleman – and seems like a hammy actor when doing so –, and Mr. Flintwinch, the wife-beater, thinly disguises his atrocities with the phrase of giving his wife a dose of medicine. Flora Finching, Arthur’s puppy love, indulges in the luxury of pretending that there is some secret understanding between Arthur and herself. There are also more complex forms of self-deception, as in the case of Miss Wade, who misconstrues every act of kindness she received as a child as an attempt to snub her, or of Arthur himself, who is so diffident in his pursuit of Pet Meagles, with whom he is in love, that she will finally become the wife of the brutal artist Gowan.

In most cases, truth will out in Little Dorrit, but Dickens has undoubtedly become more pessimistic in the course of his life because we will not see everyone getting their just deserts by the end of the novel. He is also more realistic than the younger Dickens in that Arthur Clennam is anything but a splendid, youthful hero – as Nicholas Nickleby or Martin Chuzzlewit; instead, Clennam stands out with regard to his helplessness, his passivity and his perplexity. He will only be saved through the combined efforts of those to whom he proved a reliable friend, and through the moral strength of Little Dorrit.

Although Little Dorrit needs some time to get its plot moving, I really liked the novel as a whole because there are a lot of satirical humour, an infinity of memorable characters, and some extremely brilliantly written passages, like Mr. Dorrit’s coach-trip back to Rome, or Dickens’s technique of letting background information seep in by and by in people’s conversations. All in all, Little Dorrit is one of the books that show me why I love Dickens so much.

More complex than my other favorite Dickens novels (and less adventure) but what a wonderful story! And of course, the many eccentric characters which Dickens excelled at - Miss Wade (who epitomizes the phrase "a chip on the shoulder"), Mr. Dorrit (the "father of the Marshalsea"), the Bosom (!! otherwise known as Mrs. Merdles), Affrety... I could go on and on. I can see that some readers would not care for this, especially the ending but I like the way Dickens always gives us that happy ending.