Description

Charles Dickens's 1846 novel, Dombey and Son, is a tale of children and parents, innocence and greed, loneliness and love. Paul Dombey is an affluent shipping merchant whose fondest dream is to have a son. Although he already has a beautiful daughter, Florence, Dombey is not content until the day his son, Paul Jr., is born. Dombey's ailing wife dies soon after giving birth, and, to Dombey's dismay, his young heir is far from strong. Florence and Paul form a close bond, marked by the trust and tenderness that their father seems incapable of showing them both. At only six, young Paul tragically dies, leaving his father distraught. Without her brother, Florence is cast adrift, unloved and rejected by her only remaining family member. As time goes by, Dombey's self-centered ways bring him down a dark and twisted path and Florence must battle to emerge triumphant from the shadow of her painful childhood.

About the Author

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was uniquely successful as a writer during his lifetime, enjoying huge followings from readers and audiences in England and America. When, early in life, sudden misfortune sent his family into extreme poverty, the young Charles was sent to work in a factory. Never forgetting this childhood misery, Dickens wrote often in later life about the plights of the working poor. As a young man he became a law clerk and stenographer, moving into journalism in the 1830s. Dickens's early journalistic sketches formed the basis for his first literary works. With the 1836 serialized publication of The Pickwick Papers, his unparalleled success as an author began. Dickens went on to write such famous novels as David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Barnaby Rudge, Hard Times, and Bleak House, with all of his works remaining in print to this day.

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Opening Lines (Experimental)

CHAPTER 1.
Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great arm-chair by the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, ...