Upon its publication in 1857, Little Dorrit immediately outsold any of Dickens's previous books. The story of William Dorrit, imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Prison, and his daughter and helpmate, Amy, or Little Dorrit, the novel charts the progress of the Dorrit family from poverty to riches. In his Introduction, David Gates argues that "intensity of imagination is the gift from which Dickens's other great attributes derive: his eye and ear, his near-universal empathy, his ability to entertain both a sense of the ridiculous and a sense of ultimate significance.
A few years ago, I found out that Bolivian prisons often still work like the debtor prison from a Dickens novel - little communities with families growing up inside and people coming and going. So now a Bolivian prison is on my life list (for a visit, that is).
Excellent, though I found it a little hard to believe that Arthur would so unwisely invest his company's money. I think Dickens could have been a little more clever in how he sent Arthur to the poorhouse. But, overall, very good, nicely complex story.
