At last, rather later in the month than intended, we reach the final push to the end of Bleak House. As with Dickens’ original publication schedule in September 1853, we finish with a double dose of instalments, covering Chapters 60 to 67.
I wonder why Dickens published both instalments at once? Nowadays, we tend to see bumper double-issues of periodicals on a seasonal basis — for example, for summer reading, or for the winter holiday period. But I can’t imagine that there is anything particularly special about September in that respect. Perhaps some of the individual plot lines will be wound up in instalment 19 and Dickens wanted to make sure that people kept reading through to the end, without losing his audience (and sales of the final issue) early?
Whatever the reason, the end is in sight. Tally-ho!
The full text of Bleak House can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks, and audiobook versions are available from LibriVox.
You can find our previous discussions on Bleak House as follows:
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instalment 1: chapters 1 to 4
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instalment 2: chapters 5 to 7
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instalment 3: chapters 8 to 10
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instalment 4: chapters 11 to 13
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instalment 5: chapters 14 to 16.
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instalment 6: chapters 17 to 19
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instalment 7: chapters 20 to 22
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instalment 8: chapters 23 to 25
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instalment 9: chapters 26 to 29
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instalment 10: chapters 30 to 32
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instalment 11: chapters 33 to 35
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instalment 12: chapters 36 to 38
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instalment 13: chapters 39 to 42
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instalment 14: chapters 43 to 46
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instalment 15: chapters 47 to 49
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instalment 16: chapters 50 to 53
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instalment 17: chapters 54 to 56
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instalment 18: chapters 57 to 59