Little Dorrit

6W Charles Dickens. Collins Pocket Classics, ca. 1920. Notes Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit, originally published in monthly serial installments between 1855 and 1857, is a towering, satirical masterpiece of Victorian social realism that delivers a scathing critique of the British class system and institutional bureaucracy. The complex, multi-layered narrative centers on Amy "Little Dorrit" Dorrit, a fiercely unselfish, devoted young woman who was born and raised within the grim walls of the Marshalsea Debtors' Prison in London, where she tirelessly cares for her proud, self-absorbed father. Her life intersects with Arthur Clennam, a deeply disillusioned middle-aged man returning from a long exile in the East, who becomes determined to uncover the dark financial secrets linking their two families. Through a vast, interconnected web of characters—spanning the squalor of the debtors' prison, the stagnant aristocratic circles of high society, and the absurdly gridlocked corridors of the Circumlocution Office—Dickens uses the physical prison as a profound psychological metaphor for the rigid social structures, financial greed, and religious hypocrisy that trap every level of Victorian society. Description  Red cloth binding with gilt lettering to spine and original dustwrapper. Inscription to flyleaf dated December 1923.