Little Dorrit Resources

So you can search for specific passages and don't have to type out long quotations.

Everything you ever wanted to know about our favorite repressed ancestors, brought to you by Brown University. This link goes straight to the page for Dickens and covers topics like "Gender Matters," "Economic Contexts," "Political History," and much more.

So you can see where the characters are walking around and what they see as they go from place to place. Dickens was a big walker and his descriptions of how you get on foot from here to there are crazy-accurate.

The BBC's "British History In-Depth" site on the Victorian era. Learn about topics ranging from daily life to health and welfare to the Industrial Revolution.

There are actually a lot of productions of the book... but we here at Shmoop can personally vouch for the 2008 miniseries made by the BBC. It's about as good a movie version as you're going to get, with the main bonus being that they actually found a 20-something actress who looks like a 13-year-old for the part of Amy.

An 1855 article about from the New York Times trying to humorously apply the Circumlocution Office satire to New York government.

Watch the trailer for the 2008 BBC miniseries, starring Matthew Macfadyen and Claire Foy.

See what the cast of the 2008 miniseries has to say about the novel, characters, and the TV adaptation.

The writer of the 2008 miniseries gives us the run-down of all the characters, and how he adapted them for today's audience.

An interview with Dickens scholar Tatiana Holway, who "illuminates the shadowy world of imprisonment and debt at the center of Little Dorrit and examines Dickens's personal restlessness and deep connections to the fictional landscape he created."

An animated video about Dickens's life, from the good folks at the BBC.

Could you have survived Dickens's London? Play this BBC game and find out.

A 2008 NPR Morning Edition episode on Charles Dickens and the current economy, including references to Little Dorrit: "The economic crisis is rattling people's nerves, but imagine living during the time of Charles Dickens, when the Bank of England was on the verge of collapse and financial ruin was sudden. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, a professor at Oxford University's Magdalen College, talks with Renee Montagne about his article comparing today's financial crisis with the economic downturn when Dickens was a boy."

Listen to a sample from a full-cast dramatized audio book. Ian McKellen (Gandalf!) narrates. (Hint: Click "play sample" below the image of the audio book cover.)

Phiz's original illustrations for Little Dorrit.