Meanwhile, Shmoop needs two cups of coffee just to open our eyes in the morning. Somehow in there he also found the time to get married, have ten kids, then leave his wife for an 18-year-old actress.

(His favorite was David Copperfield.) This is saying a lot, because not only did he write novel after novel after novel, but he also-in his 'spare' time-wrote plays, short stories, and magazine articles toured the country doing live readings from his works and was a political activist with many causes. And each is a masterpiece.īleak House was the first of these later novels (the others are Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend, and Great Expectations), and remained Dickens's second-favorite thing he ever wrote. Each focuses on a specific institution or bureaucracy, which is usually strongly criticized and mercilessly mocked. Each has zillions of characters living at every level of society. When he did finally get back to writing novels, he put out a series of very long, very complex works.

Not to relax or anything, but to work on some other stuff: finding funding for cleaning up London slums, being a public health and anti-pollution activist, thinking about getting into Parliament, and reading about the ridiculousness of the Court of Chancery. He was in the middle of his career, had already written some extremely popular books (including Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol), and was already a super-famous guy (and well on his way to being the most famous person in the world). Just before writing Bleak House in 1852, Charles Dickens took a break from being a novelist. Want more deets? We've also got a complete Online Course about Bleak House, with three weeks worth of readings and activities to make sure you know your stuff.

The bleak house