Synopsis:

When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he becomes deeply concerned with the well-being of Amy Dorrit, his mother’s seamstress, and the plight of her father, William Dorrit, a man of faded dignity who has been imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison for many years.

As Arthur soon realizes, the ominous influence of the prison extends far beyond its walls, impacting the lives of many, from the kind-hearted Mr. Panks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsy, talkative Flora Finching, to Merdle, a corrupt financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office.

A masterful exploration of the condition and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit stands as one of the crowning achievements of Dickens’s mature works.