Little Amy Dorrit was born in debtor's prison, the youngest child of William Dorrit, a long-time inmate of the Marshalsea. Earning meager wages as a seamstress, she is befriended by her employer's son, Arthur, who eventually helps to free Mr. Dorrit from prison. When William Dorrit inherits a fortune, the newly free and wealthy family travels to Italy.
Meanwhile, their benefactor falls on hard times when he becomes the victim of a gigantic fraud perpetrated by an eminent financier and is himself sentenced to the Marshalsea. Little Dorrit finds him there, and a relationship develops between them that juxtaposes ambition with humility, acquisitiveness with generosity, regret with optimism.
A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens's maturity.
Charles Dickens (1812 –1870) was born in Landport, Portsea, England, the second of eight children in a family continually plagued by debt. A legacy brought release from the nightmare of debtors’ prison and child labor and afforded him two years of formal schooling. He worked as an attorney’s clerk and newspaper reporter until his early writings brought him the amazing success that was to be his for the remainder of his life.
