Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, fog down the river, fog creeping into the courts of Chancery where a lawsuit called Jarndyce and Jarndyce has ground on for generations, devouring fortunes and lives. Charles Dickens's 1853 masterpiece is the great novel of institutional England, a labyrinth of destinies stretching from the slums of Tom-all-Alone's to the aristocratic decay of Chesney Wold. Two narrators share the telling: one omniscient and scathing, the other a quiet young woman piecing together the secret of her own birth. Dickens populates his world with such ferocious abundance that the novel becomes a living city. It is his darkest work, a cathedral built to house the knowledge that the law devours those it claims to protect.