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Bleak House is a novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between 12 March 1852 and 12 September 1853. The serialization and first edition were both published in London by Bradbury & Evans. The novel has many characters and several subplots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills. In a preface to the 1853 first edition, Dickens said there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably Thellusson v Woodford, in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticized Dickens's satire as exaggerated, Bleak House helped support a judicial reform movement that culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.
In the late nineteenth century, actress Fanny Janauschek acted in a stage version of Bleak House in which she played both Lady Dedlock and her maid Hortense. In 1876 John Pringle Burnett's play, Jo found success in London with his wife, Jennie Lee playing Jo, the crossing-sweeper. In 1893, Jane Coombs acted in a version of Bleak House. A 1901 short film, The Death of Poor Joe, is the oldest known surviving film featuring a Charles Dickens character (Jo in Bleak House). In the silent film era, Bleak House was filmed in 1920 and 1922. In 1928, a short film made in the UK in the Phonofilm sound-on-film process.
In 1998, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a radio adaptation of five hour-long episodes. The BBC has produced three television adaptations of Bleak House. The first serial, Bleak House, was broadcast in 1959 in eleven half-hour episodes. The serial survives. The second Bleak House, aired in 1985 as an eight-part series. In 2005, the third Bleak House was broadcast in fifteen episodes. It won a Peabody Award.
BLEAK HOUSE
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