A sprawling novel centred on the interminable Chancery suit Jarndyce and Jarndyce, weaving together mystery, satire of the law, and the secret of Lady Dedlock.
Books mentioned in Bleak House (3)
Othello by William Shakespeare: “Or "One stone terrace (cracked), one gondola in distance, one Venetian senator's dress complete, richly embroidered white satin costume with profile portrait of Miss Jogg the model, one Scimitar superbly mounted in gold with jewelled handle, elaborate Moorish dress (very rare), and Othello."”
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: “in hooking one, hook all and bear them off as Lemuel Gulliver bore away the stately fleet of the majestic Lilliput.”
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: “Jarndyce said he doubted if Robinson Crusoe could have read it, though he had had no other on his desolate island.”
Books that mention Bleak House (10)
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim: “that line spoken years and years ago by an actress playing the part of Poor Jo in dramatised version of Bleak House”
One of Ours by Willa Cather: “his mother read aloud to him from "Bleak House,"--one of the few novels she loved.”
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: “There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans.”
Babel Tower by A. S. Byatt: “'a class in Scarborough reading Bleak House' in Frederica's imagined alternate life.”
Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens: “A passage about Sir Leicester Dedlock and gout from Bleak House; a spine-tingling rendition of Humbert Humbert's last verbal duel with Quilty...”
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger: “we've already done it twenty-three times today and I would rather read Bleak House.”
11/22/63 by Stephen King: “I spent my days there, cooking her meals, working in her little garden (which would sicken but not quite die in another hot central Texas summer), and reading Bleak House to her.”
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose: “discussed among examples of writers who convince readers of the realities of landscape and nature in their fiction.”
The Disappearers by Marlon James: “I've read Bleak House more times than that black-hating piece of dog shit named Dickens deserves”
In the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells: “If so, you will find them rendered with a note of hostile exaggeration by Dickens in "Bleak House," with a mingling of gross flattery and keen ridicule by Disraeli, who ruled among them accidentally by misunderstanding them and pleasing the court,…”