Harold Skimpole
''Bleak House'' is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, 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 claimed there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably the '' Thellusson v Woodford'' case in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, this novel helped support a judicial reform movement which culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s. There is some debate among scholars as to when ''Bleak House'' is set. Th ...
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Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school at the age of 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. After three years he returned to school, before he began his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, for education, and for other social ...
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Chesney Wold (Frontispiece), Bleak House (1852-3) Plate
''Bleak House'' is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, 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 claimed there were many actual precedents for his fictional case. One such was probably the ''Thellusson v Woodford'' case in which a will read in 1797 was contested and not determined until 1859. Though many in the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, this novel helped support a judicial reform movement which culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s. There is some debate among scholars as to when ''Bleak House'' is set. The Englis ...
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Walter Savage Landor
Walter Savage Landor (30 January 177517 September 1864) was an English writer, poet, and activist. His best known works were the prose ''Imaginary Conversations,'' and the poem "Rose Aylmer," but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity. As remarkable as his work was, it was equalled by his rumbustious character and lively temperament. Both his writing and political activism, such as his support for Lajos Kossuth and Giuseppe Garibaldi, were imbued with his passion for liberal and republican causes. He befriended and influenced the next generation of literary reformers such as Charles Dickens and Robert Browning. Summary of his work In a long and active life of 89 years Landor produced a considerable amount of work in various genres. This can perhaps be classified into four main areas—prose, lyric poetry, political writings including epigrams, and Latin. His prose and poetry have received most acclaim, but cri ...
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James Henry Leigh Hunt
James Henry Leigh Hunt (19 October 178428 August 1859), best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist and poet. Hunt co-founded '' The Examiner'', a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles. He was the centre of the Hampstead-based group that included William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb, known as the "Hunt circle". Hunt also introduced John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson to the public. Hunt's presence at Shelley's funeral on the beach near Viareggio was immortalised in the painting by Louis Édouard Fournier. Hunt inspired aspects of the Harold Skimpole character in Charles Dickens' novel ''Bleak House''. Early life James Henry Leigh Hunt was born 19 October 1784, at Southgate, London, where his parents had settled after leaving the United States. His father, Isaac, a lawyer from Philadelphia, and his mother, Mary Shewell, a merchant's daughter and a devout Quaker, had been forced to come to Britain becau ...
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The Little Old Lady, Bleak House (1852-3) Plate
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun ''thee'') when followed by a v ...
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Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926–1938) while living in Berlin, where he met his wife. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on the East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux, Switzerland. From 1948 to 1959, Nabokov was a professor of Russian literature at Cornell University. Nabokov's 1955 novel '' Lolita'' ranked fourth on Modern Library's list of the 100 best 20th-century novels in 2007 and is considered one of the greatest 20th-century works of literature. Nabokov's ''Pale Fire'', published in 1962, was ranked ...
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Richard Smith (merchant)
Richard Smith (1707–1776) was an English merchant in the West Indies trade, and director of the East India Company. Life Smith was born in Whitehaven, then in Cumberland, or Appleby-in-Westmorland, Appleby, Westmorland. He was a merchant and slave owner in the West Indies. When he moved back from Barbados, where he was Sugar plantations in the Caribbean, a plantation owner, to London, he brought five enslaved people with him. Smith's business assets included a warehouse in Cheapside, and Lys Farm near Bramdean in Hampshire, once used for cattle-breeding. Having bought the farm in 1769, he began to transform it into a gentlemanly estate, Brockwood Park, building a English country house, country house; a wing was added to the house in 1774, and at the end of his life it was a family home. It is now the site of the Krishnamurti Centre, as Brockwood Park. Smith died on 13 October 1776. Legacy Smith's will left a number of enslaved persons, by name, to his grandchildren. The draf ...
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Charlotte Turner Smith
Charlotte Smith (née Turner; – ) was an English novelist and poet of the School of Sensibility whose ''Elegiac Sonnets'' (1784) contributed to the revival of the form in England. She also helped to set conventions for Gothic fiction and wrote political novels of sensibility. Despite ten novels, four children's books and other works, she saw herself mainly as a poet and expected to be remembered for that. Smith left her husband and began writing to support their children. Her struggles for legal independence as a woman affect her poetry, novels and autobiographical prefaces. She is credited with turning the sonnet into an expression of woeful sentiment and her early novels show development in sentimentality. Later novels such as ''Desmond'' and '' The Old Manor House'' praised the ideals of the French Revolution. Waning interest left her destitute by 1803. Barely able to hold a pen, she sold her book collection to pay debts and died in 1806. Largely forgotten by the mid-19t ...
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William Jennens
William Jennens (possibly Jennings) (1701–1798), also known as William the Miser, William the Rich, and The Miser of Acton, was a reclusive financier who lived at Acton Place in the village of Acton, Suffolk, England. He was described as the "richest commoner in England" when he died unmarried and intestate with a fortune estimated at £2 million, which became the subject of legal wrangles (''Jennens v Jennens'') in the Court of Chancery for well over a century until the entire estate had been swallowed by lawyers' fees. This may have been the stimulus for the fictional case of ''Jarndyce v Jarndyce'' in Charles Dickens' serialised novel ''Bleak House''. ''The Gentleman's Magazine'' reported in 1798 that "A will was found in his coat-pocket, sealed, but not signed; wing toleaving his spectacles at home when he went to his solicitor for the purpose of duly executing it." Biography William was born in 1701 to Ann(e) (née Guidott 1675, daughter of Carew Guidott(i)) and Robert Je ...
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Charles Day (boot Blacking Manufacturer)
Charles Day (1782/3–25 October 1836) was a British industrialist who was co-founder and then sole proprietor of the Day and Martin boot blacking company, founded around 1801 in partnership with Benjamin Martin (c1774-1834).Ward, R. D. (2014). Wealth and Notability: the Lockwood, Day and Metcalfe Families of Yorkshire and London. pages 24–37. and post-publication update notes. http://copac.jisc.ac.uk/search?title=wealth%20and%20notability&rn=1 It is said that the "Real Japan Blacking" "Black Diamond" formula was originally obtained in return for a favour from a soldier in Doncaster by Benjamin Martin's brother-in-law (or his father in another version). Benjamin Martin took the formula to London where he worked as a hairdresser with Charles Day's father. Martin and the Days then began manufacturing and selling the product. Business grew rapidly and by the end of 1805 Day and Martin had acquired new premises at 97 High Holborn. Day bought out Martin for £10,000 in 1808. Some ve ...
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Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in which case it is known as latent tuberculosis. Around 10% of latent infections progress to active disease which, if left untreated, kill about half of those affected. Typical symptoms of active TB are chronic cough with blood-containing mucus, fever, night sweats, and weight loss. It was historically referred to as consumption due to the weight loss associated with the disease. Infection of other organs can cause a wide range of symptoms. Tuberculosis is spread from one person to the next through the air when people who have active TB in their lungs cough, spit, speak, or sneeze. People with Latent TB do not spread the disease. Active infection occurs more often in people with HIV/AIDS and in those who smoke. Diagnosis of active TB is ...
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Attorney And Client- Fortitude And Impatience, Bleak House (1852-3) Plate
Attorney may refer to: * Lawyer ** Attorney at law, in some jurisdictions * Attorney, one who has power of attorney * ''The Attorney'', a 2013 South Korean film See also * Attorney general, the principal legal officer of (or advisor to) a government * Attorney's fee, compensation for legal services * Attorney–client privilege * ''Clusia rosea ''Clusia rosea'', the autograph tree, copey, cupey, balsam apple, pitch-apple, and Scotch attorney, is a tropical and sub-tropical flowering plant species in the family Clusiaceae. The name '' Clusia major'' is sometimes misapplied to this specie ...