You may have seen that Yvette Prior and I are running a small Little Dorrit challenge.  The challenge runs from today, June 9 (Dickens passed away on June 9, 1870) and will run until Sunday, June 13.  You can join by writing a post about the book and linking to any of mine or Yvette’s posts about it.  Your posts can be about anything at all – what you though of the book, a review, talking about the writing style, about the characters, about humor, about satire, about what you liked, about what you hated or anything else that comes to mind.

This post is to get things started with a few facts about the book.

Little Dorrit was originally published in serial form between 1855 and 1857. The story is set in London in 1826 and features Amy Dorrit, aka “Little Dorrit”, the youngest child of her family, born and raised in the Marshalsea prison for debtors in London, the same place where Dickens’ father was imprisoned in real life. Arthur Clennam encounters her after returning home from a 20-year absence, ready to begin his life anew. (paraphrased from Wikipedia) In many ways Arthur is the real “main character”, not Little Dorrit, but she is the center of attention.