Little Dorrit

When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his motheras seamstress, and in the affairs of Amyas father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr. Pancks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, "Little Dorrit" is one of the supreme works of Dickensas maturity.

<b>David Gates</b> is the author of the novels <i>Jernigan</i> and <i>Preston Falls</i> and a collection of short stories, <i>The Wonders of the Invisible World</i>. He writes for Newsweek and teaches at the New School for Social Research and Hunter College. He lives in Brooklyn and in Washington County, New York.