Bleak House

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Beatnie Edney, Ronald Pickup

Penguin Classics presents Charles Dickens' epic Bleak House, adapted for downloadable audiobook and read by Ronald Pickup and Beatnie Edney.

As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper. A savage, but often comic, indictment of a society that is rotten to the core, Bleak House is one of Dickens's most ambitious novels, with a range that extends from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the poorest of London slums.

Part of a series of abridged, vintage recordings taken from the Penguin Archives.

Affordable, collectable, quality productions - perfect for on-the-go listening.

Dickens might go far

This is only my second Dickens. I preferred Great Expectations. It was a good story but there were too many characters for an audiobook. The performance was very well done. I preferred the female narrator to the male. For some reason a man playing a woman jarrred much more than a woman playing a man.

A Valiant Effort, But Don't Expect "Great"

I've heard a few Dickens works in audio form, and other than "A Christmas Carol" (which many amateurs can bring to life) Dickens' works seem much more tedious in this form than they are in written form. In this narration, Beatie Edney and Ronald Pickup do a very good job, but I found my mind wandering quite a bit, and had to rewind now and again to catch up to the story line and characters. If you hate lawyers like I do, you'll enjoy Dickens sharp satire of the British legal system and its parallels to this day and age in which law suits never seem to die. The book is a classic and definitely worth your time, but not as entertaining as some others I have found.

Poor narration.

The narrator was so bad I had to buy a different version with another narrator