书名：Bleak House 荒凉山庄
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数1180
作者：Charles Dickens
出版社名称：Signet Classics
出版时间：2011
语种：英文
ISBN：9780451531902
商品尺寸：10.7 x3.2 x 17.2 cm
包装：简装
页数：944 （以实物为准）

Bleak House《荒凉山庄》是查尔斯·狄更斯创作中后期一部很重要的作品，是作者文学技艺达到炉火纯青境界的重要标志。小说以两个家庭为基本架构，围绕两条线索展开，人物关系错综复杂，情节引人入胜，语言生动活泼。它清晰完美地展现了英国维多利亚中早期的社会生活整体风貌，揭示出了社会的发展变迁走向，尽管讲述的是一系列让人心碎的故事，但小说结尾营造出和谐宁静的气氛，我们从中可以感受到生活的希望和人性的温暖。
本版本为Signet Classics推出的简装便携全英文版，由伦敦大学维多利亚文学名誉教授、狄更斯研究专家Michael Slater作序，1996年国家图书奖获得者Elizabeth McCracken写后记，有助于理解作品及作者创作背景。
“Perhaps Bleak House is his best novel… When Dickens wrote Bleak House he had grown up.” —G. K. Chesterton
Bleak House opens in a London shrouded by an all-pervading fog that swirlsaround the Court of Chancery, wherelawyers areenriching themselves in endless litigation over a dwindling inheritance. Considered one of Dickens’s greatest works,Bleak House scathingly portrays his belief:“The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself.” His genius for characterization, dramatic construction, social satire, and poetic evocation is memorably evidenced in this work as in no other. Peopled with characters both comic and tragic—including one of literature’s first detectives and a case of spontaneous human combustion—in settings ranging from the mansion of a fear-haunted noblewoman to the squalor of the London slums, this superb narrative was hailed by Edmund Wilson as a“masterpiece.”
With a New Introduction byMichael Slater and an Afterword by Elizabeth McCracken 

加迪斯家的后代们为了争夺遗产，消耗了青春，甚至郁郁而终。一晃几十年过去，诉讼费用耗完了所有财产，整个案件也就不了了之。很多人成了僵化死板的法律条文和墨守成规的国家机器的牺牲品。
In the fog of London, lawyers enrich themselves with endless litigation over a dwindling inheritance. A sterling example of Dickens’s genius for character, dramatic construction, and social satire, this novel was hailed by Edmund Wilson as a “masterpiece”.

查尔斯·狄更斯，19世纪英国批判现实主义小说家。狄更斯特别注意描写生活在英国社会底层的“小人物”的生活遭遇，深刻地反映了当时英国复杂的社会现实，为英国批判现实主义文学的开拓和发展做出了卓越的贡献。他的作品至今依然盛行，对英国文学发展起到了深远的影响。主要作品有《匹克威克外传》《雾都孤儿》《老古玩店》《艰难时世》《圣诞颂歌》《我们共同的朋友》等。
Charles Dickens (1812-70), perhaps the best British novelist of the Victorian era, was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. His happy early childhood was interrupted when his father was sent todebtors’ prison, and young Dickens had to go to work in a factory at age twelve. Later, he took jobs as an office boy and journalist before publishing essays and stories in the 1830s. His first novel,The Pickwick Papers, made him a famous and popular author at the age of twenty-five. This and subsequent works were published serially in periodicals and cemented his reputation as a master of colorful characterization, and as a harsh critic of social evils and corrupt institutions. His many books includeOliver Twist,David Copperfield,Bleak House,Great Expectations,A Christmas Carol, andA tale oftwo cities.
Michael Slater is Emeritus Professor of Victorian Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, and a Past President of the International Dickens Fellowship and the Dickens Society of America. He is a former Editor of The Dickensian and his publications includeDickens and Women (1983),An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Dickens (1999), and, most recently, his acclaimed biographyCharles Dickens (2009). From 1994 to 2000, he editedThe Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens's Journalism.
Elizabeth McCracken is the author of two novels,The Giant’s House (a finalist for the 1996 National Book Award) andNiagara Falls All Over (winner of the 2001 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award),as well as the collection of short storiesHere’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry and the acclaimed memoirAn Exact Replica of a Figment of MyImagination. 

Introduction
Bleak House
Afterword
Selected Bibliography