Little Dorrit Author:Charles Dickens The glitter of wealth and the darkness of the debtor's prison form the boundaries of this masterpiece of Dickens' mature artistry. The product of the same period as GREAT EXPECTATIONS and OUR MUTUTAL FRIEND, LITTLE DORRIT shares with them the author's disenchantment with the Victorian World. But it is unique in its depiction of his most powerful... more »ly realized heroine, Amy Dorrit--no passive emobodiment of goodness but its active agent. Her struggle to save her family from being crushed by destitution and then corrupted by sudden fortune; her love for a man whose role of savior is transformed to that of victim; her refusal to surrender to the machinations of a swindling millionaire in league with a monstrous government bureaucracy--all represent a magnificently defiant vision of individual virtue triumphing over a world where hypocrisy and exploitation have become the way of life. LITTLE DORRIT, with its multitude of vivid characters and its complex, beautifully worked out plot, offers a magic and a message still fresh, still powerful today.« less