Little Dorrit

Little Dorrit
Charles Dickens

CONTENTS
Preface to the 1857 Edition
BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY
1. Sun and Shadow
2. Fellow Travellers
3. Home
4. Mrs Flintwinch has a Dream
5. Family Affairs
6. The Father of the Marshalsea
7. The Child of the Marshalsea
8. The Lock
9. little Mother
10. Containing the whole Science of Government
11. Let Loose
12. Bleeding Heart Yard

13. Patriarchal
14. Little Dorrit's Party
15. Mrs Flintwinch has another Dream
16. Nobody's Weakness
17. Nobody's Rival
18. Little Dorrit's Lover
19. The Father of the Marshalsea in two or three Relations
20. Moving in Society
21. Mr Merdle's Complaint
22. A Puzzle
23. Machinery in Motion
24. Fortune-Telling
25. Conspirators and Others
26. Nobody's State of Mind
27. Five-and-Twenty
28. Nobody's Disappearance
29. Mrs Flintwinch goes on Dreaming
30. The Word of a Gentleman
31. Spirit
32. More Fortune-Telling

33. Mrs Merdle's Complaint
34. A Shoal of Barnacles
35. What was behind Mr Pancks on Little Dorrit's Hand
36. The Marshalsea becomes an Orphan

BOOK THE SECOND: RICHES

1. Fellow Travellers
2. Mrs General
3. On the Road
4. A Letter from Little Dorrit
5. Something Wrong Somewhere
6. Something Right Somewhere
7. Mostly, Prunes and Prism
8. The Dowager Mrs Gowan is reminded that 'It Never Does'
9. Appearance and Disappearance
10. The Dreams of Mrs Flintwinch thicken
11. A Letter from Little Dorrit
12. In which a Great Patriotic Conference is holden
13. The Progress of an Epidemic
14. Taking Advice

15. No just Cause or Impediment why these Two Persons should not be
joined together
16. Getting on
17. Missing
18. A Castle in the Air
19. The Storming of the Castle in the Air
20. Introduces the next
21. The History of a Self-Tormentor
22. Who Passes by this Road so late?
23. Mistress Affery makes a Conditional Promise, respecting her
Dreams
24. The Evening of a Long Day
25. The Chief Butler Resigns the Seals of Office
26. Reaping the Whirlwind
27. The Pupil of the Marshalsea
28. An Appearance in the Marshalsea
29. A Plea in the Marshalsea
30. Closing in
31. Closed
32. Going
33. Going!

34. Gone

PREFACE TO THE 1857 EDITION
I have been occupied with this story, during many working hours of
two years. I must have been very ill employed, if I could not leave its
merits and demerits as a whole, to express themselves on its being read
as a whole. But, as it is not unreasonable to suppose that I may have
held its threads with a more continuous attention than anyone else can
have given them during its desultory publication, it is not unreasonable
to ask that the weaving may be looked at in its completed state, and
with the pattern finished.
If I might offer any apology for so exaggerated a fiction as the
Barnacles and the Circumlocution Office, I would seek it in the
common experience of an Englishman, without presuming to mention
the unimportant fact of my having done that violence to good manners,
in the days of a Russian war, and of a Court of Inquiry at Chelsea. If I
might make so bold as to defend that extravagant conception, Mr
Merdle, I would hint that it originated after the Railroad-share epoch, in
the times of a certain Irish bank, and of one or two other equally
laudable enterprises. If I were to plead anything in mitigation of the
preposterous fancy that a bad design will sometimes claim to be a good
and an expressly religious design, it would be the curious coincidence
that it has been brought to its climax in these pages, in the days of the
public examination of late Directors of a Royal British Bank. But, I
submit myself to suffer judgment to go by default on all these counts, if
need be, and to accept the assurance (on good authority) that nothing
like them was ever known in this land. Some of my readers may have
an interest in being informed whether or no any portions of the
Marshalsea Prison are yet standing. I did not know, myself, until the
sixth of this present month, when I went to look. I found the outer front
courtyard, often mentioned here, metamorphosed into a butter shop;
and I then almost gave up every brick of the jail for lost. Wandering,
however, down a certain adjacent 'Angel Court, leading to Bermondsey',
I came to 'Marshalsea Place:' the houses in which I recognised, not only

as the great block of the former prison, but as preserving the rooms that
arose in my mind's-eye when I became Little Dorrit's biographer. The
smallest boy I ever conversed with, carrying the largest baby I ever saw,
offered a supernaturally intelligent explanation of the locality in its old
uses, and