Little Dorrit

'She? That's Little Dorrit. She's nothing. She's just a whim.' Poor Little Dorrit. Her future looks as bleak as her past and her present. Born and brought up in a debtors' prison, she relies on her sewing skills to help support her father. Little does she know that her sewing will soon present an opportunity for change. When change arrives in the form of Arthur Clennam it is accompanied by secrets and dangers. Who is he? What are his motives for wanting to help Little Dorrit? Follow Little Dorrit's tale as it winds its way through London and Italy. Enjoy the rich variety of characters she encounters, and share with her the twists and turns of the road she travels.

Real Reads are accessible texts designed to support the literacy development of primary and lower secondary age children while introducing them to the riches of our international literary heritage. Each book is a retelling of a work of great literature from one of the world's greatest cultures, fitted into a 64-page book, making classic stories, dramas and histories available to intelligent young readers as a bridge to the full texts, to language students wanting access to other cultures, and to adult readers who are unlikely ever to read the original versions.

Harvey Peter Sucksmith edited the definitive critical edition of Little Dorrit for the Clarendon Dickens, and a critical edition of Collins’s The Woman in White for Oxford English Novels.
Dennis Walder is an Emeritus Professor of Literature at the Open University. He is the author of Literature in the Modern World and, most recently, Postcolonial Nostalgias: Writing, Representation, and Memory. He was a judge for the Commonwealth Writers’ prize, 2011.