Charles Dickens’s great anti-law novel, Bleak House (1852-3), was formally daring and technically ambitious. Part mystery story, part comment on the age (Dickens called it his “Condition of England” novel), from its first appearance it attracted both enthusiasts and detractors among its vast, worldwide readership. In the late 20th and 21st centuries it has continued to provoke intense responses, generating a body of work that reflects the major trends in criticism and theory of the novel. In this course we will consider the novel in both its 19th-century contexts and in recent criticism. The aim is not only to read Bleak House – one of the great novels of the Victorian period - but to read readers of Bleak House, to think about the different ways the novel has been construed in different contexts, and to how it has shaped ongoing critical debates in, for example, narrative theory, historicism, formalism, and postcolonial literary criticism. (18th/19th)