Little Dorrit Introduction by Irving Howe

When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mothers seamstress, and in the affairs of Amys 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 Dickenss maturity.

Irving Howe is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Graduate Center of the City of New York and co-editor of Dissent magazine. His many publications include Thomas Hardy, Politics and the Novel, Culture and Politics in the Age of Emerson, and Socialism and America. His Selected Writings appeared in 1990.