Penguin presents the companion book to the Masterpiece Theatre miniseries starring Gillian Anderson (The House of Mirth, The X-Files). This stunning production features a screenplay written by Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones's Diary). Part romance, part melodrama, part detective story, the novel spreads out among a web of relationships in every level of society from the simple-minded Sir Leicester Dedlock, to Jo the street sweeper.

Bleak House opens in the twilight of foggy London, where fog grips the city most densely in the Court of Chancery. The obscure case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, in which an inheritance is gradually devoured by legal costs, the romance of Esther Summerson and the secrets of her origin, the sleuthing of Detective Inspector Bucket and the fate of Jo the crossing-sweeper, these are some of the lives Dickens invokes to portray London society, rich and poor, as no other novelist has done. Bleak House, in its atmosphere, symbolism and magnificent bleak comedy, is often regarded as the best of Dickens. A 'great Victorian novel', it is so inventive in its competing plots and styles that it eludes interpretation.