Little Dorrit (1857)

Debt is a prison, but having money does not necessarily free a family from its habits of deference and display. Amy Dorrit's household gives Dickens an intimate route into financial dependency, while the Circumlocution Office turns institutional evasion into vicious comedy. Read it for the connection between a family's shame and a system's refusal to act. Serialised in 1855–57, it is long, densely populated and sometimes sentimental; the anger underneath is anything but mild.