Other editions of book Little Dorrit

The novel begins in Marseille "thirty years ago" (i.e. ca. 1826) with the notorious murderer Rigaud informing his cellmate that he has murdered his wife. There is also the character Arthur Clennam, who is returning to London to see his mother following the death of his father with whom he had lived for twenty years in China. As he died, his father had given Arthur a mysterious watch, murmuring, "Your mother." Naturally Arthur had assumed that it was intended for Mrs Clennam, whom he and the world supposed to be his mother.

This BBC Radio 4 dramatization starring Sir Ian McKellen recreates the author's mid-19th-Century London. Drawing upon his own father's imprisonment in Marshalsea Debtors' Prison, Dickens placed the institution firmly in the heart of the novel when telling the story of Amy Dorrit. The youngest child of debtor William Dorrit, Amy is born in the Marshalsea prison. She and her father are befriended by Arthur Clennam, whose mother employs "little Dorrit" as a seamstress. The fortunes of the Dorrits undergo an extreme change when Williams inherits a fortune, and the family move to Italy. Back in England, Arthur Clennam finds himself the victim of a massive fraud and ends up in Marshalsea. There he is found by Little Dorrit, whose fortune has had no effect on her generosity and humility. Arthur realizes that she loves him, but it is not until the Dorrit fortune is lost that the two of them can be united at last. Peopled with Dickens' usual host of memorable characters, this mix of satire and genuine sentiment has made this one of his best-loved works.

The novel begins in Marseilles "thirty years ago" (c. 1826), with the notorious murderer Rigaud telling his cellmate John Baptiste Cavalletto how he killed his wife. Arthur Clennam is detained in Marseilles with a group of travellers in quarantine. He meets new friends in the quarantine. He is returning to London to see his mother after 20 years in China with his father, handling that part of the family business. His father died there. On his deathbed, his father had given him a mysterious message, murmuring "Your mother," which message and a watch Arthur mails to Mrs Clennam.Inside the watch casing is an old silk paper with the initials DNF (Do Not Forget) worked in beads. It is a message, but the implacable Mrs Clennam, who now uses a wheelchair, refuses to tell him what it means. The two become estranged.

“Thirty years ago there stood . . . in the borough of Southwark . . . the Marshalsea Prison. It had stood there many years before, and it remained there some years afterwards; but it is gone now, and the world is none the worse without it.” — Charles Dickens, Little DorritAmy Dorrit’s father is not very good with money. She was born in the Marshalsea debtors’ prison and has lived there with her family for all of her twenty-two years, only leaving during the day to work as a seamstress for the forbidding Mrs. Clennam. But Amy’s fortunes are about to change: the arrival of Mrs. Clennam’s son Arthur, back from working in China, heralds the beginning of stunning revelations not just about Amy but also about Arthur himself.From the Trade Paperback edition.

The novel begins in Marseilles "thirty years ago" (c. 1826), with the notorious murderer Rigaud telling his cellmate John Baptiste Cavalletto how he killed his wife. Arthur Clennam is detained in Marseilles with a group of travellers in quarantine. He meets new friends in the quarantine. He is returning to London to see his mother after 20 years in China with his father, handling that part of the family business. His father died there. On his deathbed, his father had given him a mysterious message, murmuring "Your mother," which message and a watch Arthur mails to Mrs Clennam.Inside the watch casing is an old silk paper with the initials DNF (Do Not Forget) worked in beads. It is a message, but the implacable Mrs Clennam, who now uses a wheelchair, refuses to tell him what it means. The two become estranged.

Amy Dorrit€™s father is not very good with money. She was born in the Marshalsea debtors€™ prison and has lived there with her family for all of her 22 years, only leaving during the day to work as a seamstress for the forbidding Mrs. Clennam. But Amy€™s fortunes are about to change€”the arrival of Mrs. Clennam€™s son Arthur, back from working in China, heralds the beginning of stunning revelations not just about Amy but also about Arthur himself.

When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother's seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy's 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 Panks, 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 Dickens's maturity.

The novel begins in Marseilles "thirty years ago" (c. 1826), with the notorious murderer Rigaud telling his cellmate John Baptiste Cavalletto how he killed his wife. Arthur Clennam is detained in Marseilles with a group of travellers in quarantine. He meets new friends in the quarantine. He is returning to London to see his mother after 20 years in China with his father, handling that part of the family business. His father died there. On his deathbed, his father had given him a mysterious message, murmuring "Your mother," which message and a watch Arthur mails to Mrs Clennam.Inside the watch casing is an old silk paper with the initials DNF (Do Not Forget) worked in beads. It is a message, but the implacable Mrs Clennam, who now uses a wheelchair, refuses to tell him what it means. The two become estranged.