Little Dorrit is a novel written by Charles Dickens published between 1855 and 1857. The book was published in serial form and was divided into nineteen parts, each sold separately. Each installment was illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne and had approximately 30 pages. It was subsequently issued as a complete text in 1857.
Little Dorrit was written towards the latter part of Dickens's career, and after he was well-established as a successful author. The period in which he was writing the novel overlapped with him meeting and falling in love with Ellen Ternan, an actress who was considerably younger than he. In 1858, just a few months after completing Little Dorrit, Dickens would separate from his wife. In the novel he wrote immediately before Little Dorrit, Hard Times, Dickens had tackled themes of economic critique but had been criticized for getting some significant details wrong about how business and finance worked. By returning to these plot elements and combining them with a clear focus on social and psychological elements, Dickens defiantly insisted on the role of fiction in debates around economic systems.
Dickens initially planned to call Little Dorrit "Nobody's Fault," presumably as a way to emphasize the novel's themes of personal responsibility, the dangers of a lack of regulation and accountability, and the failure of political and economic systems lapsing into apathy. The change of title focuses the attention on the protagonist, and better aligns the novel with previous works like Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. It also became the only one of Dickens's novels to directly reference a female character in the title.
Little Dorrit was adapted into films in 1913, 1920, and 1934, and then again in 1988. In 2008, the novel was adapted into a well-received BBC miniseries which won seven Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Miniseries.
