Little Dorrit

Published in 1855-57, this novel centres on Amy Dorrit, who has grown up in the Marshalsea debtors' prison attending her imprisoned father, William Dorrit. Arthur Clennam, returning from China, tries to understand his family's grim household and a possible wrong done to the Dorrits, and is drawn to Amy. Around them turn the Circumlocution Office, the financier Merdle, the inventor Daniel Doyce, and the French villain Rigaud. The plot moves between the prison, decaying London, and a later life of sudden wealth abroad. It is a story about imprisonment, bureaucracy, and money, both literal and figurative.

Bound in cream cloth printed with a montage of Keeping’s illustrations from the text, with dark red spine-label. Dark red endleaves. Dark red slipcase, with Dickens’s signature in gold.