Little Dorrit

by Charles Dickens

Category: Fiction

Status: Available

Source: Public Domain — Project Gutenberg

About This Book

"Little Dorrit" by Charles Dickens is a novel published in serial form between 1855 and 1857. Amy Dorrit, born and raised in London's Marshalsea debtors' prison, captures the attention of Arthur Clennam upon his return from twenty years abroad. As Arthur investigates a cryptic message from his dying father, their lives intertwine amid questions of debt, family secrets, and social class. Dickens satirizes Victorian society's failures—from debtors' prisons to government bureaucracy—while exploring how sudden fortune can transform lives and relationships. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

About the Author

English · 1812–1870

One of the most loved English writers of all time. His stories show the hard lives of poor people in Victorian London.

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LITTLE DORRIT

By Charles Dickens

CONTENTS

Preface to the 1857 Edition

BOOK THE SECOND: RICHES

PREFACE TO THE 1857 EDITION

I have been occupied with this story, during many working hours of two years. I must have been very ill employed, if I could not leave its merits and demerits as a whole, to express themselves on its being read as a whole. But, as it is not unreasonable to suppose that I may have held its threads with a more continuous attention than anyone else can have given them during its desultory publication, it is not unreasonable to ask that the weaving may be looked at in its completed state, and with the pattern finished.

If I might offer any apology for so exaggerated a fiction as the Barnacles and the Circumlocution O

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About This Edition

This edition of Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens is catalogued on Libreya under Fiction and runs approximately 337,085 words — about 1685 minutes of reading at an average pace. It is sourced from Project Gutenberg, the world's oldest digital library of public domain literature, founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, and every text on Libreya has been verified to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. You can view the original Project Gutenberg edition here.

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About Classic Fiction

Classic fiction represents the highest achievements of literary imagination. The novels in this genre have shaped how generations of readers understand human nature, society, and the fundamental questions of existence. Reading 19th and early 20th-century novels offers far more than historical interest: these stories explore love, ambition, morality, and identity with an insight that remains startlingly relevant today. Authors like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Austen, Hardy, and Dickens wrote for readers much like us — people trying to make sense of a complicated world — and their observations on class, relationships, power, and conscience carry across centuries with barely diminished force. Classic fiction is also where the novel as an art form reached some of its greatest heights: innovative narrative structures, deeply realized characters, and prose styles that reward slow, attentive reading. These are not museum pieces. They are living works that continue to be discussed, adapted, and argued over because they capture something essential and enduring about human experience.