In `Little Dorrit` Dickens gives us a great satire on poverty and riches.
At its centre are William Dorrit, who has been imprisoned for years in Marshalsea debtors` gaol, and his loyal daughter Amy, `Little Dorrit`, who cherishes an unrequited love for the novel`s hero, Arthur Clennam. As their stories weave together - drawing in the vast worlds of the Marshalsea, the poor of Bleeding Heart Yard, the government mandarins at the Circumlocution Office - so the novel unravels a compelling mystery of fraud, blackmail, a rich inheritance and a suppressed codicil.
Dickens`s joyous eye for detail and his vigorous, encyclopedic curiosity combine with a mastery of plot and depth of vision to make `Little Dorrit` (1857) one of the finest novels of his maturity. With `Bleak House` and `Hard Times`, which appeared in the same decade, it contains his most penetrating criticism of the age.