Spring 2026
Prereq: none
Units: 3-0-9 HASS-H; Can be repeated for credit
In the Victorian era (1837-1901), novels provided popular entertainment but also began staking large claims to artistic seriousness and ambition. Having become a celebrity as the author of best-selling comic novels, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) turned, in his middle years, to producing novels of much more careful construction and much higher aims.
Bleak House (serialized 1852-53) is Charles Dickens’s masterpiece: one critic called it “the most audacious and significant act of the novelistic imagination … in the nineteenth century” (and that is saying something, because the 19th century is known for many excellent novels, from Jane Austen to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky).
Bleak House attempts a comprehensive representation of English culture, from high society to the lowest of the low. This was the culture of the world’s most powerful nation, holding the largest empire the world had ever seen. The novel ranges from broad comedy to scathing critique. It also features several mysteries, sustains an atmosphere of danger and suspense, and introduces one of the first detectives in modern fiction.
Depicting a complex, immersive social world, Bleak House is long and intricate. To make the task more approachable, this class will take up Bleak House in a manner resembling the way it was initially published: in serial installments. Installments of the novel will be interspersed with other readings throughout the entire semester. Those other readings will include two novels by contemporaries of Dickens’s who also helped pioneer the detective story. We will read Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) and Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868), two fascinating page-turners teeming with mystery and suspense. We’ll also read selected stories by Arthur Conan Doyle about the world’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes.
The class will help students develop skills of close reading and interpretation. Student work will include short writing exercises, quizzes, and brief oral reports. A final project will reflect on the semester’s experience. Please contact jmbuzard@mit.edu with any questions. [Pre-1900]