List $54.98

Written by Charles Dickens - Audio book performed by Sean Barrett & Teresa Gallagher

Abridged Fiction - 9 COMPACT DISCS - 11 hours, 15 minutes

Publisher, Naxos Audiobooks (May 2007)

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A complex plot of love and inheritance is set against the English legal system of the mid-nineteenth century, with all its tortuous avenues and disguised resolutions. Here is the firm, Jarndyce & Jarndyce, the young orphan and ward of court Ester Summerson (who tells much of the story). As always, it is the skilled pen of Dickens himself that creates the momentum with his acute eye for both individual characters and their traits, and the backdrop of Victorian London.

‘“A dreary name,” said the Lord Chancellor...’ (Chapter III). His Lordship is referring to Bleak House – and Dickens himself, perhaps with the Lord Chancellor’s opinion in mind, took some time to arrive at this title for his book. This was to be his ninth novel, written at the height of his powers, but it was to be unlike any of his previous novels; it was to be a novel of purpose. Dickens had a message to convey on a grand scale, and there was to be no central character who would dominate the narrative. Having completed the ultimate biographical novel in David Copperfield, he set about writing a biography of the nation in Bleak House. Biographical titles like Oliver Twist or David Copperfield would therefore be inappropriate. Instead, his novel was to reflect the state of England in 1853 – a vast undertaking.

For the title Dickens considered that a building central to the plot would serve as a unifying image to the disparate storyline, with its two narrators and conflicting literary styles. As in David Copperfield where Mr Micawber, for example, had been a portrait of his indigent father, Dickens once again drew upon his own experiences, family and friends to provide the archetypes for Bleak House. This proved to be controversial; Dickens finally settled on Bleak House without any explanatory sub-title or additions. This enigmatic title would allow his readers to reflect and apply it as they chose to the contents of the novel, whose projected image of England is indeed in many ways – bleak.

The novel

The story is told by two narrators – a unique feature of Dickens’s work. Esther, self-effacingly tells her own story, whilst an anonymous voice unravels the mystery of Lady Dedlock’s story. But characters cross into both stories and at times Esther’s story is told by the other narrator. This inter-mixing and crossing of conventions produces a complicated plot, at times disconcerting, that was criticised on its first publication as being in ‘absolute want of construction.’ But Dickens was evolving a new type of novel – he spread his net wide to include a vast range of characters to give a panoramic view of English society from top to bottom, and to show how the highest and the lowest interact.

Such diversity also helped him in the construction of what is essentially a mystery story, a ‘who-dun-it’, where characters and plot-strands appear like clues and can just as likely turn out to be red herrings. Bleak House could in fact be called the first detective novel in English Literature, as it pre-dates The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins.

About the Author: Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was born at Landport, then a little suburb of Portsmouth, on Friday 7 February 1812. His father was John Dickens, a clerk in the navy pay-office, and at that time attached to Portsmouth dockyard; in 1814 he was transferred to London, and in 1816 to Chatham, where the boy, already a great reader, got some schooling. In 1821 the family fell into trouble; reforms in the Admiralty deprived the father of his post and the greater part of his income; they had to leave Chatham, and went to London, where they lived in a mean house in Camden Town. But not for long. The father was arrested for debt and consigned to the Marshalsea, and Charles, then only ten years old, and small for his age, was placed in a blacking factory at Hungerford Market, where he labeled the blacking bottles, with other poor boys. Not only were his days passed in this wretched work , but the child was left entirely to himself at night, when he had four miles to walk to his lonely bedroom in Camden Town. On Sundays he visited his father in the prison; and presently they found him a lodging in Lant Street close by. On his father’s release they all went back to Camden Town and the boy was sent again to school, an academy in the Hampstead Road for three to four years. When he was taken from school no better place could be found for him than a stool at the desk of a solicitor. Meanwhile, however, his father had obtained a post as reporter for the Morning Herald, and Charles resolved, also, to attempt the profession of journalist. He taught himself shorthand and frequented the British Museum daily to supplement some of the shortcomings in his reading. In his seventeenth year he became a reporter at Doctor’s Commons; but all his ambitions at this time were for the stage. It was not until he was twenty-two that he succeeded in getting permanent employment on the staff of a London paper as a reporter. In this capacity he was sent about the country a great deal. In December 1833 the Monthly Magazine published his Dinner at Poplar Walk Other papers followed but produced nothing for the contributor except the gratification of seeing them in print. However, they did Dickens the best service by enabling him to prove his ability and he soon made arrangements to contribute papers and sketches regularly to the Evening Chronicle, continuing to act as reporter for the Morning Chronicle, and getting his salary increased from five guineas to seven a week. The Sketches by Boz were published in the beginning of 1836, the author receiving £150 for the copyright; he afterwards bought it back for eleven times that amount. In March that same year appeared the first number of The Pickwick Papers; three days afterwards Dickens married Catherine, the daughter of his friend George Hogarth, the editor of the Evening Chronicle. She bore him seven sons and three daughters between 1837 and 1852, three of whom, predeceased him; in 1858 husband and wife separated. Success having come his way Dickens allowed himself no rest. In fulfillment of publisher’s engagements he produced Oliver Twist (1837–39, in Bentley’s Miscellany which Dickens edited for a time), Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39) and Master Humphrey’s Clock, a serial miscellany which resolved itself into two stories, The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41) and Barnaby Rudge (1841). Thereafter a great part of Dickens’ life was spent abroad, especially notable being his visits to America in 1842 and 1867–68, his stay in Genoa in 1844–45 and at Lausanne in 1846 and his summers spent in Boulogne in 1853, 1854 and 1856. Meanwhile there came from his pen an incessant stream: American Notes (1842), Martin Chuzzlewit (1843), The Christmas Tales – viz. A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1843, 1846 and 1848); Pictures from Italy (1845), Dombey and Son (1846–48), David Copperfield (1849–50), Bleak House (1852–53), The Child’s History of England (1854), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1855–57), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), The Uncommercial Traveller (1861), the Christmas numbers in Household Words and All the Year Round, Great Expectations (1860–61), Our Mutual Friend (1864–65), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870, unfinished). To this long roll must be added public readings (1858–70), both in this country and in America, private theatricals, speeches, letters innumerable, pamphlets, plays, the conduct of a popular magazine – first (1850) called Household Words and then (1859) All the Year Round. Nevertheless he had taken irreparable toll of his vitality, and he died suddenly on 9 June 1870 at Gadshill, near Rochester (the place he had coveted as a boy and purchased in 1856), and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

The general style of Dickens was virile and direct. He had full command English, reinforced by sympathy and humour, by drollery as refreshing as it was unexpected and by a fierce indignation against wrong. Critically his work is easily assailed, but of its popularity there can be no doubt, for it has conquered the whole English-speaking world.

About the Performers: Sean Barrett and Teresa Gallagher joined forces to record this memorable rendition of the classic Dickens novel at Soundtracks Studio. Adrian Sear of Soundtracks took some footage of them reading for the video trailer.

Sean Barrett started acting as a boy on BBC children’s television in the days before colour, when it went out live. He grew up through Z Cars, Armchair Theatre, Minder and Father Ted. His theatre credits include Peter Pan at the old Scala Theatre and Noel Coward’s Suite in 3 Keys in the West End. Films include War& Peace, Dunkirk and A Cry from the Streets. He was a member of the BBC Radio Drama Company. He also features in Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, The Voice of the Buddha and Canterbury Tales III and read the part of Vladimir in Waiting for Godot and Nakata in Kafka on the Shore for Naxos AudioBooks.

Teresa Gallagher has performed in many leading roles in both plays and musicals across the country, London’s West End and Broadway. In addition, she is a well-known voice to listeners of BBC Radio Drama. Her work on film includes The Misadventures of Margaret and Mike Leigh’s Topsy Turvy. For Naxos AudioBooks she has recorded the Biography of Jane Austen and selections from The Decameron by Boccaccio. She has also read Classic Women’s Short Stories, Heidi, The Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods and The Story of Jesus for Naxos AudioBooks.