Chancery mud and Esther's shy voice, chapter by chapter.
Charles Dickens's Bleak House, read aloud one chapter per episode from a LibriVox recording in the public domain. The Court of Chancery, a bored lady of fashion from Lincolnshire and Esther Summerson's shy, observant first-person pages all come through in the novel's own words.
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Bleak House by Charles Dickens is exactly what its name promises: the novel read aloud, one chapter to an episode, from a LibriVox recording that the opening announcement places in the public domain. Chapters 1 and 4 credit the recording to Mill Nicholson. Episodes begin with the chapter heading and close on the words 'End of chapter', so the book's own divisions set the shape of each one. Two voices carry the story. The first is a narrator outside the action, who opens the book on a London of implacable November weather, with as much mud in the streets as if the waters had only just drained away and soot falling in flakes as big as snowflakes. This is prose that pictures a megalosaurus waddling up the hill and doesn't blink. That narrator is unsparing about the Court of Chancery. A little mad old woman attends every sitting, clutching a reticule of papers she calls her documents, mostly paper matches and dry lavender. A ruined suitor from Shropshire keeps trying to address the Chancellor at the end of the day's business, and the chapter closes wishing the court's injustice could be locked up and burnt away. The same voice then turns to the world of fashion, finds it not so unlike Chancery since both live on precedent and usage, and watches a lady up from Lincolnshire swoon in front of the lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn. The second voice belongs to Esther Summerson. She starts by saying she knows she is not clever, remembers telling her secrets to a doll, and recalls a parting kiss from Mrs. Rachel as cold as a thaw-drop. Her chapters give up the wide view for close, domestic detail. At Mrs. Jellyby's, under the chapter heading 'Telescopic Philanthropy', the household dines at all hours while its mistress keeps her fine eyes fixed on Africa and a small boy called Peepy turns up bruised and dirty. A morning walk leads to a shop whose owner is nicknamed the Lord Chancellor and keeps three sacks of ladies' hair below; Richard rebukes him for handling Ada's. Small comic touches break through the gloom, as when the Jellyby children climb onto the back of the departing carriage and fall off. Then the road runs west out of the city, past windmills, rickyards and horse-troughs, to a house where Esther is handed the housekeeping keys and meets Mr. Skimpole, a little bright creature with a rather large head and a sweet voice. There are two good places to start. Chapter 1 shows the mud and the court at their fullest; Chapter 3 is where Esther first speaks for herself. Chapter 6 closes on a small, telling moment: she shakes her basket of keys until they sound like little bells and sends herself to bed with 'Esther, Esther, Esther, duty, my dear.'
Made for: Suits a listener who wants to hear Bleak House in Dickens's own words, one chapter at a time, and who enjoys long Victorian sentences, a sharp eye on the Court of Chancery and a narrator as self-effacing as Esther Summerson.
What sets it apart: It is the novel itself rather than a discussion of it: a public-domain LibriVox recording divided so each episode holds one chapter, opening on the chapter heading and closing on 'End of chapter'.
Over twenty consecutive months, Charles Dickens enthralled readers with his monthly installments of the novel Bleak House, a complex and compelling portrayal of the English judicial system. Serialized in his own magazine, Household Words, between 1852 and 1853, the book is deemed to be his finest work and is his ninth novel. Using an innovative literary technique known as “free indirect discourse,” where the narrator himself speaks through the medium of one of his main characters, Dickens uses the heroine Esther Summerson and an unidentified narrator as the vehicle for his story. Esther Summerson is a young woman who is brought up under mysterious circumstances by several people, including a…
London's mud reaches the courtroom; your appetite for bureaucratic absurdity has met its match.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A fogbound court turns legal delay into grotesque, enduring satire.
Bleak House begins in a London soaked with November mud, soot, smoke, and fog, until the city feels almost swallowed by its own weather. Out of that murk comes Lincoln's Inn Hall, where the Lord Chancellor presides over Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a case so old and tangled that…
A sealed fashionable world grows uneasy when Mr. Tulkinghorn's reading unsettles my lady.
Chapter 02 makes a muddy afternoon in town feel like a portrait of a small fashionable world sealed inside its own rules. Fashion is treated as something governed by precedent and habit, then the focus shifts to my lady's town house, bright in the season and bleak when the…
Esther leaves behind a doll, a house, and the guarded life she once knew.
Chapter 3 opens Esther's story in a hushed, personal key. She begins by admitting that writing does not come easily, then turns back to the doll that once held the secrets she could not give to anyone else.
A mission to Africa meets bruised children, bare rooms, and one very cold Peepy.
Chapter 4 turns a grand philanthropic vision into a domestic comedy of neglect. Mr. Kenge presents Mrs. Jellyby as a woman absorbed by Africa, coffee cultivation, and the relocation of surplus home population to African riverbanks, while her own house can barely manage children,…
A raw, foggy London walk finds household disorder and Chancery's rot in a lantern-lit shop.
Bleak House turns a raw, foggy morning walk into a brisk study of domestic disorder, London grime, and Chancery's warped logic. Miss Jellyby treats an uncertain breakfast as ordinary, Mr Jellyby takes what he can before leaving for the office, and even the milk seems liable to…
Chapter 2 of Bleak House contrasts “the world of fashion” with the Court of Chancery, calling both systems of “precedent and usage” and “jeweller’s cotton and fine wool.” Lady Dedlock returns from Lincolnshire, where flooded ground, a “ghost’s walk,” and relentless rain make her house feel sealed off and exhausted.
["Esther Summerson opens Chapter 03 by saying she is \"not clever\" and by recalling Dolly, her doll, as the one listener she trusted with her secrets.", "Miss Barbary's severity, a blocked birthday invitation, and the line \"it would have been better ...
Chapter 4 of Bleak House, Telescopic Philanthropy, sends Esther Summerson, Ada Clare, and Richard Carstone to Mrs.
["Chapter 05 turns a foggy London morning into a walk through Jellyby neglect, Chancery satire, and Mr.
Esther Summerson, Ada Clare, and Richard Carstone leave London by coach and spend the day anticipating their arrival at Bleak House.
Chapter 7 of Bleak House opens with the rain falling "drip, drip, drip" on the Ghost's Walk terrace at Chesney Wold in Lincolnshire, while Sir Lester and Lady Deadlock are away in Paris.
Esther describes Bleak House’s gardens and John Jarndyce’s growlery, where he explains that a Chancery inheritance suit has become a “country dance of costs and fees.” Jarndyce says the original will’s merits have vanished as years of filings and legal costs consume the fortune.
Esther says Richard and Ada grow closer through quiet companionship, while she keeps their confidence.
This episode is a public domain audiobook recording of Chapter 46 of Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House.
A reading of Chapter XLVII of Charles Dickens' Bleak House, following Alan Woodcourt and Joe through the streets as Alan considers how to help the destitute boy.
A reading of Chapter XLVIII of Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House, describing the social scene and Lady Deadlock's demeanor.
This episode reads Chapter XLIX of Charles Dickens' Bleak House, focusing on the Bagnet family's birthday celebration.