Bleak House By Charles Dickens Illustrated (Penguin Classics)

Dickens' grandest, most virtuosic achievement, Bleak House combines two tales: the story of wealthy Lady Dedlock, recounted in the third person, and that of penniless Esther Summerson, told in her own words.

The haughty noblewoman and the orphan are connected by the court case Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a tangle of disputed wills and disrupted inheritance that has tied up the High Court of Chancery for decades.