Dickens Daily

Have you ever wanted to read a Dickens novel in the way it would have been originally enjoyed? Dickens Daily allows you to do just that by sending instalments right to your inbox at the same rate as the original serialisations. /// Our current novel is A Tale of Two Cities! Make sure you subscribe and catch up on the archive for anything you've missed.

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Chapter I of Bleak House is now live! You can read an excerpt below or fully catch up in our archive. Sign up below to receive all further chapters in your inbox!

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The works of Charles Dickens as they would have been originally experienced. Click to read Dickens Daily, a Substack publication with hundre

CHAPTER I.

IN CHANCERY.

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time—as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth.

On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be sitting here—as here he is—with a foggy glory round his head, softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog. On such an afternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar ought to be—as here they are—mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On such an afternoon the various solicitors in the cause, some two or three of whom have inherited it from their fathers, who made a fortune by it, ought to be—as are they not?—ranged in a line, in a long matted well (but you might look in vain for truth at the bottom of it) between the registrar’s red table and the silk gowns, with bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits, issues, references to masters, masters’ reports, mountains of costly nonsense, piled before them. Well may the court be dim, with wasting candles here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it would never get out; well may the stained-glass windows lose their colour and admit no light of day into the place; well may the uninitiated from the streets, who peep in through the glass panes in the door, be deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect and by the drawl, languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the Lord High Chancellor looks into the lantern that has no light in it and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and begging through the round of every man’s acquaintance, which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give—who does not often give—the warning, “Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!”

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[mxcottonsocks]

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Chapter I of Bleak House is now live! You can read an excerpt below or fully catch up in our archive. Sign up below to receive all further chapters in your inbox!

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The works of Charles Dickens as they would have been originally experienced. Click to read Dickens Daily, a Substack publication with hundre

CHAPTER I.

IN CHANCERY.

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time—as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth.

On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be sitting here—as here he is—with a foggy glory round his head, softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog. On such an afternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar ought to be—as here they are—mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On such an afternoon the various solicitors in the cause, some two or three of whom have inherited it from their fathers, who made a fortune by it, ought to be—as are they not?—ranged in a line, in a long matted well (but you might look in vain for truth at the bottom of it) between the registrar’s red table and the silk gowns, with bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits, issues, references to masters, masters’ reports, mountains of costly nonsense, piled before them. Well may the court be dim, with wasting candles here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it would never get out; well may the stained-glass windows lose their colour and admit no light of day into the place; well may the uninitiated from the streets, who peep in through the glass panes in the door, be deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect and by the drawl, languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the Lord High Chancellor looks into the lantern that has no light in it and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and begging through the round of every man’s acquaintance, which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give—who does not often give—the warning, “Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!”

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Get the novels of Charles Dickens delivered to your inbox

Have you ever wanted to read a Dickens novel in the way it would have been originally enjoyed? Inspired by Dracula Daily, Dickens Daily is here to do just that.

What are we reading?

We've serialised three books over the last few years and you're just in time for the start of our next book on 1st March: Bleak House

What is Bleak House?

First serialised between 1852 and 1853, Bleak House is a sprawling tale of family, inheritance, justice and murder. (And spontaneous combustion!)

How will it work?

Starting 1st March 2026, chapters will be sent out for the first three or four Sundays of each month (depending on how many chapters were originally published that month) and it will run until October 2027. For further details, see the calendar below the read more at the bottom of this post.

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We hope very much that you will join us for what is often regarded as one of Dickens’ best works!

Our reading schedule!

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Dickens Daily Returns

Time to get ready

It has now been two months since we finished our serialisation of A Tale of Two Cities, so this is your reminder that our next book, Bleak House, will begin in just over a month. First serialised between 1852 and 1853, Bleak House is a sprawling tale of family, inheritance, justice and murder. (And spontaneous combustion!) We hope very much that you will join us for what is often regarded as one of Dickens’ best works!

Read on if you want to know more about how things will work this time. Otherwise keep your eyes on your inboxes for that first chapter, coming 1st March 2026!

How will it work?

Things will be slightly different this time, as this is the first Dickens book we have serialised that was intended for publication on a monthly schedule rather than a weekly one. We will be continuing with our usual weekly publication, but these original monthly releases only had three – or occasionally four – chapters per month.

It has been decided that we will release each chapter on a weekly basis from the first Sunday each month until that month’s instalments have all gone out. This will mean that there will usually be one or two Sundays at the end of the month with no new chapter.

For example, Chapters I-IV will be released on the 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd of March 2026 respectively. There will be no chapter sent out on 29th March, as Chapter V will be released on Sunday 5th April 2026. You can find a full calendar of which chapters will be released when below!

Happy 2026/1852!

[dickensdaily]

Thanks so much for running the A Tale of Two Cities serialisation for the last few months! I've had a great time, and am looking forward to Bleak House!

Thank you very much for reading along! Dickens Daily doesn't have the hugest readership, but it's all worth it knowing there are people out there reading along and reacting week by week.

[mxcottonsocks]

It was too much the way of Monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee, and it was much too much the way of native British orthodoxy, to talk of this terrible Revolution as if it were the only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been sown—as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had led to it—as if observers of the wretched millions in France, and of the misused and perverted resources that should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming, years before, and had not in plain words recorded what they saw. - Book the Second, Chapter 24 'Drawn to the Loadstone Rock', A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

This is why I think people who say that in A Tale of Two Cities Dickens is 'against revolution' are kind of missing the point. He's clearly not a fan of the violence that was committed during the Revolution, but he was also not saying 'violence is bad and therefore people should put up with ill-treatment forever'.

He sees the Revolution as the 'inevitable' "harvest" of what has been "sown".

The way to avoid revolution is not for the "wretched millions" to put up with their wretchedness forever, but for the "Monseigneurs" of this world to not make them so wretched in the first place.

[mxcottonsocks]

It's interesting to read A Tale of Two Cities in its original serialised parts.

This week Dickens:

closes off a question raised two weeks ago ("Who could that be with Mr. Lorry?"),

leaves unresolved questions raised last week (what will happen to Charles now? and "What other [denounced him]?"), and

opens a new question ("What purpose [does Sydney have]?" and what does he have to say to Barsad alone?)

This opening and closing of questions builds suspense and keeps readers coming back every week.

[mxcottonsocks]

Work's been super busy the last few weeks so I've not been able to make the Dickens Daily posts I meant to. So a round-up of my rough notes:

'The Substance of the Shadow'

I think the reason (besides suspense) Dickens keeps Dr Manette's story for so late in A Tale of Two Cities is because he thinks it's important at this point to remind the audience of how bad the ancien regime was. Most off this part of the story is about the 'reign of terror', the French Revolution at its worst, so he sandwiches inbetween all that Dr Manette's testimony showing the ancien regime at its worst as well. It's pretty impossible to read this part of the book and not agree that the horror and exploitation of ancient regime needed to end somehow.

It comes back to that bit in an earlier chapter about the Revolution as a harvest of what had been sown.

'Dusk' and 'Darkness'

“Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop,” returned madame; “but don’t tell me.” An absolute banger of a line.

I think it's interesting how everyone tries to stay strong and do things for each other, when they wouldn't be able to in the circumstances if they were only acting for themselves.

'Fifty-Two'

Dickens back on his the-sea-as-death metaphor (most prominently used in Dombey & Son).

😩😩😩

I don't think I ever appreciated that the Laundress appears here, I think I've always mushed up part of this chapter with another in my mind.

The use of pronouns to bring the reader into the events is so effective.

'The Knitting Done':

The suspense...

Also I think it's interesting that the structure of the last couple of chapters is similar to in Barnaby Rudge. Like in BR, the action of the novel culminates in the penultimate chapter in serious one-on-one violence between two characters; unlike in Barnaby Rudge, this is between two women rather than two men.

[mxcottonsocks]

Normal things to say while having a drink with a new acquaintance:

"I begin to think we are not much alike in any particular, you and I."

"Is it worth being tried for one’s life, to be the object of such sympathy and compassion?"

"Do you think I particularly like you?"

[mxcottonsocks]

Silence in the court! Charles Darnay had yesterday pleaded Not Guilty to an indictment denouncing him (with infinite jingle and jangle) for that he was a false traitor to our serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, prince, our Lord the King, by reason of his having, on divers occasions, and by divers means and ways, assisted Lewis, the French King, in his wars against our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth; that was to say, by coming and going, between the dominions of our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, and those of the said French Lewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise evil-adverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what forces our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, had in preparation to send to Canada and North America.

- Chapter II, Book the Second, A Tale of Two Cities

New favourite Dickens-ism: "otherwise evil-adverbiously"

[mxcottonsocks]

Poor Doctor Manette 😔

[sydney-carton-of-sour-milk]

“Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a business charge to acquit myself of. In your reception of it, don’t heed me any more than if I was a speaking machine—truly, I am not much else.”

“These are mere business relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one to another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass from one of our customers to another in the course of my business day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere machine.”

“And you will see how truly I spoke of myself just now, in saying I had no feelings, and that all the relations I hold with my fellow-creatures are mere business relations, when you reflect that I have never seen you since. No; you have been the ward of Tellson’s House since, and I have been busy with the other business of Tellson’s House since. Feelings! I have no time for them, no chance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary Mangle.”

“Pray,” said Mr. Lorry, in a soothing tone, bringing his left hand from the back of the chair to lay it on the supplicatory fingers that clasped him in so violent a tremble: “pray control your agitation—a matter of business. As I was saying—”

“You speak collectedly, and you—are collected. That’s good!” (Though his manner was less satisfied than his words.) “A matter of business. Regard it as a matter of business—business that must be done.”

“A-a-matter of business—don’t be distressed.”

“A—a matter of business. You confuse me, and how can I transact business if I am confused? Let us be clear-headed. If you could kindly mention now, for instance, what nine times ninepence are, or how many shillings in twenty guineas, it would be so encouraging. I should be so much more at my ease about your state of mind.”

“That’s right, that’s right. Courage! Business! You have business before you; useful business.”

a collection

[mxcottonsocks]

- chapter 1, A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens

Catch up with the first 3 chapters (sent out before today 5th May 2025), and sign up to have the remaining chapters sent to you by email, 1 or 2 chapters a week until November, following the original serialisation schedule from 1859:

The works of Charles Dickens as they would have been originally experienced. Click to read Dickens Daily, a Substack publication with hundre

[mxcottonsocks]

Something I noticed while reading this week's chapter of A Tale of Two Cities (Chapter 5) is this passage:

And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was heavy—cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence—nobles of great power all of them; but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sigh, Hunger.

Compare that to this section from A Christmas Carol:

From the foldings of its robe, it [the ghost of Christmas present] brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

[...]

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”

A few things stick out to me:

In both, youth is transformed painfully by hard experiences into an appearance of age.

Both mention Ignorance and Want (ATOTC adds cold, dirt and sickness).

The imagery used to represent Ignorance and Want is different in the different books: in ACC, Dickens uses the image of children, of innocence usurped into monstrosity by the actions of Man (I assume the use of children is to build upon the work begun earlier with Tiny Tim; Dickens is trying to ignite sympathy and positive action from Scrooge and from his readers by playing on their desire to help children); however, in ATOTC, Dickens instead imagines ignorance and want as 'nobles of great power', and also as a cloud which casts darkness over this area of Paris (essentially, we see cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance and want as oppression by nobility - fitting for pre-revolutionary France).

Ignorance and Want have changed around; in ACC, Scrooge is told to "most of all beware this boy [Ignorance]", while in ATOTC, it is Want who emphasis is given to. I'm unsure of the reason for this - did Dickens change his mind between writing ACC and ATOTC about which was worse? was it because of a difference in the socio-economic contexts in which he was writing (early-1840s Vs late-1850s)? or because of the difference in the setting of the stories (England in 1840s Vs France in the 1770s)? Any thoughts?

[sydney-carton-of-sour-milk]

“‘After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won't trust your fore-legs till I get you on the level,’ said this hoarse messenger, glancing at his mare.”

I can’t believe that I, to my recollection, haven’t noticed this wonderfoal pun until now