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    Dombey and Son: Illustrated Edition
    Dombey and Son: Illustrated Edition
    Dombey and Son: Illustrated Edition
    Ebook1,350 pages21 hours

    Dombey and Son: Illustrated Edition

    By Charles Dickens

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    Paul Dombey is the wealthy owner of the shipping company, whose dream is to have a son to continue his business. When his son is born, Dombey's wife dies shortly after giving birth. The child, named Paul after his father, is a weak and sickly child, who does not socialize normally with others. He is intensely fond of his sister Florence, who is deliberately neglected by her father as irrelevant and a distraction. Young Paul's health declines even further and he dies, still only six years old, and he is left only with his daughter, whom he pushes away while she futilely tries to earn his love.
    LanguageEnglish
    Publishere-artnow
    Release dateApr 3, 2018
    ISBN9788026881919
    Dombey and Son: Illustrated Edition
    Author

    Charles Dickens

    Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.

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    Reviews for Dombey and Son

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    • 3/5
      A very high three stars. This book has some very funny passages, and a lot of emotion. It's not one of the greatest Dickens works, and it definitely loses some of the drive after the major tragedy one-third of the way into the book, however it is still very interesting, full of fascinating themes and characters. The 14th of Dickens' major works, and the seventh of his novels, Dombey and Son sits very comfortably in the second act of Dickens' life, in which his social and communal responsibilities slightly lowered his novel-writing output, and his desire for integrated works of character growth and investigation - begun with Martin Chuzzlewit - is in full swing.

      Perhaps it's because the first third, with the aching characters of Paul and Flora, and young Paul, is so strong and unified, that the gradual splintering of the plot leads one to feel a little bit underwhelmed as things move toward a climax. The climax itself, being in many ways an emotional rather than narrative one, is also unlike anything Dickens had previously entertained. It's really rather powerful at times. As I said, this is a high three-stars, but it definitely just creeps into my Dickens Top Ten.
    • 4/5
      Recently listened to this book again. Found the reading a bit overdone (the second reader I tried and this can be a problem consistently with Dickens audiobooks). But I love Dickens. This, while not my favorite, is a satisfying read. Faling into the verbal world of a long book (enjoying much on the long Christmas drive between California and Washington) is one of life's true pleasures.
    • 3/5
      Among all of the Dickens books I've read, this one probably falls in the middle -- not a favorite like Bleak House or Our Mutual Friend, but still a good story. This one is centered around Paul Dombey, a wealthy businessman who longs to pass along his wealth, name and business acumen to his son. But his son dies young and he is left with a daughter who he basically ignores. Like so many of Dickens other stories, this is filled with a cast of very distinct supporting characters, who often carry the story. The audiobook is excellently performed by Frederick Davidson.
    • 4/5
      In Dombey and Son Dickens demonstrates the biting satire and the more expansive social criticism of his later work. Dombey is a proud business man and wants an heir. He is cold an distant to his children, especially young Paul his "son" who is frail and after some time at a boarding school dies. His second marriage becomes its own nightmare. In Dombey Dickens begins using a thematic symbol or motif and continues this practice for his longer works - here the railroads become a symbol of progress and brute force.The plot is surprisingly linear for such a long Dickens novel. He has broken out of the more episodic nature of his early novels and begins to more effectively portray the psychology of the characters. This novel is too often overlooked but it is a fine work of the author's early maturity. While I do not like it as much as the two novels which immediately follow, David Copperfield and Bleak House, it is still vintage Dickens.
    • 4/5
      Cap'n ahoy? I stand, good sir, a week done of strenuous climbing, cliff upon cliff, at the very last able to plant my flag on Mt. Dombey - nine hundred and three pages above sea-level. Oh, a little weak in the knees, and a touch dizzy - my heart racing from the rareified atmospheres and sentiments - but remembering clearly, and with great affection, and oddly, you of all people, my dear Cap'n Cuttle.Your visage nows appears to me in a cloud on a sea blue sky. How I could have used your hooked and sinewy arm on some of those overhanging participles, me slipping like a cabin boy on a soapy deck, trying for footage on a suddenly subjunctive clause!Climb from your cloud frigate, kind sir, and shout "Hooroar for Ganeshaka! Hooroar the flag!" Hum a few bars of pretty Peg. Mightn't you have a musty bottle of old Madeira squirreled away in your sea galley to brighten a weary mate's heart chambers. Wouldn't ye now? Ye might indeed. Old and gold Madeira? Ye would, Ye would indeed. Gold, ayn't it? It is. Ayn't it? It is indeed.O.Kee.then.Let's wipe the slate clean, and pretend neither you or I ever heard of Dickens. No Christmas Carol. No David Copperfield. No Tale of Two Cities. Just Dombey and Son. What sort of novel is this?A very long elaborately crafted overly sentimental exposition of a truth and a dream. The truth, pride goeth before a fall. The dream, the meek shall inherit the earth.Elaborately crafted but not all that readable. I found myself in a fugue state recalling eight grade homework. Reverting to my younger self, like Paul Dombey, grimly puzzling over sentence diagrams. Imagining what a line like the following would parse to: "But in admitting to himself with a disappointed and creastfallen countenance, that Sol Gillis must be told, and that Walter must go - taking the case for the present as he found it, and not having it enlightened or improved beforehand by the knowing management of a friend - the captain still felt an unabated confidence that he,Ned Cuttle, was the man for Mr.Dombey,and that to set Walter's fortunes quite square, nothing was wanted but that they two should come together."I'm pretty sure that if diagrammed correctly, the above sentence would resemble exactly a dynastic chart showing the connections between the House of Hanover and the Romanovs.Dickens did write his novels in installments, for serial publication. I hope I don't appear overtly cynical by surmising he often succumbed to the temptation to throw in a superfluous sentence or three. Just to make his thirty two pages deadline. Like who'd ever know?And yes, Dombey and Son is a wee bit sentimental. Were he writing Bush and Son instead, Dickens would surely end up with George Walker blessing daughter Barbara's marriage to Michael Moore, and their infant son Georgie Sicko III, born in Cuba with the finest of medical care. While Cheney and Obama swapped family barbeque sauce recipes at the christening, and started a friendly water fight at the baptismal font.But still, but still...this is Charles (why-no-middle-name?) Dickens. He does have a 24 carat heart of gold. And sentimentality sells Kleenex, after all. And you do get caught up in the tale, and the prose - and if my pithy style has been ruined by contamination - so what? And Florence IS a lovely girl, and true. And Walter's the finest of fellows.I am intrigued, after it all, to learn more about Dickens life. I shall seek out a good biography. And I would like to read a few of his darker novels. He does "get it" - the ills of industrialization, classism, and human vanity. And he is, in some passages, like an episode of Frontline or 20/20 in a steampunk kinda way. And like the Wright Bros at Kitty Hawk, he does have these lovely lyrical lift offs - from time to time. It's fascinating to speculate what type of novels he might write if he were alive today with a brush as broad and a heart as big as he had. And if he would remain as sentimental, or given our tastes write as gory as an episode of CSI.
    • 4/5
      Merely finishing this beast of novel gives me a sense of accomplishment. This edition is 833 pages of small type, without a single blank page or added space, not even for the beginnings of chapters. Let’s estimate: 12 words per line, 39 lines per page, 833 pages equals 489,844 words, minus about 20 or 25 percent for white space gives us almost 400 thousand words. That’s four times the size of a modern novel.I spent about a month wading through this (while reading, and finishing, several other more modern novels, at the same time), and it was worth every bit of the effort. This may be my new favorite Dickens’ novel. It’s definitely more mature than “David Copperfield”, more satisfying than “A Tale of Two Cities”, more convincing than “Bleak House”. All the elements we expect from Dickens are here: the settings, the unforgettable characters, the compassion, the sentimentalism. And the female character that is too good to be true, as well - she always seems to show up in a Dickens novel somewhere, and in this case, regardless of the title, she is at the center of all the activity.And, as usual, Dickens cannot resist wrapping up every character, no matter how insignificant, and bringing everyone, no matter how wicked or debased, to an appropriate end as elevated as he can manage.So put this novel on your nightstand and chip away at it gradually for a month or so - it will be well worth the effort.
    • 5/5
      For a long time, I shied away from reading this Dickens novel. This was at least in part because the title Dombey and Son isn't exactly arresting. It was a shock, then, to not only thoroughly enjoy the book, but also realize that it could have almost as easily been titled Mr. Toots and the Game Chicken.
    • 4/5
      Memorable for the passage in which Dickens gives vent to his belief that industrialisation is dehumanising his society. He uses the story of a man so absorbed by the nature of business and trade that he renders all human interaction as an exchange. In this novel Dickens wants 'to take the rooftops off' expose the consequences of the rapid development of manufacturing. He brilliantly makes the train an engine of destruction yet is clearly mesmerised by it. Some wonderful passages and not too many of his usual digressions.
    • 4/5
      It was a happy day when I, for whatever reason, elected to sample Charles Dickens. Having read A Tale of Two Cities in high school, I digressed to more popular fiction (Michener, Clavell, McMurtry, King, Grisham), as well as periods of science fiction and even non-fiction (Ambrose, McCollough for example), before making an effort to upgrade my reading list.I read some Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Steinbeck and Hemingway with mixed success before reading Great Expectations. I liked it enough to read David Copperfield, and I was hooked. A Tale of Two Cities followed and then Oliver Twist (not my favorite), Bleak House, Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit and The Pickwick Papers before taking on this door stop of a novel.Many of Dickens’s works tend to be lengthy and excessively wordy, perhaps due to their nature of having been serialized prior to being printed in a single volume. Heretofore, I haven’t found that trait particularly annoying or troublesome, however this book proved to be an exception. I can usually read for a couple of hours before going to sleep, but found myself nodding off after only 20-30 minutes of Dombey. There are fantastic characters here, as in all of Dickens’s work, but they tend to be smothered by the frequently flowery and seemingly never ending prose.As in other Dickens works, a period of acclimation is required to become comfortable with the vocabulary and social conventions of the era. Having read almost all of Dickens’s work, I would have to rank this as my least favorite.
    • 4/5
      This novel has it all, the amazing names, the odd characters, the social commentary. Dickens seems to have attempted here a novelization of a Greek classical tragedy, but in the end, after hubris brings ruin, Dickens wraps up almost all the plot threads with marriages and general felicity. Good reading, especially on a long plane flight or three!
    • 4/5
      I found this a bit hard-going in places. Highlights included Captain Cuttle's fear of Mrs MacStinger, little Paul's conquering of Mrs Pipchin, all the scenes at the Blimbers and any including Mr Toots. Mr Dombey and Mr Carker were excellent villains. But... Alice and her mother were tiresome, I found it hard to believe in the friendship between Mr Dombey and Major Bagstock, Edith behaved incomprehensibly to me from start to finish, Mr Morfin pops up more or less from nowhere and then there is Florence. Florence is unrelentingly perfect and the idea that she would ask her father for forgiveness for leaving him was too much!
    • 4/5
      4 1/2 stars is what I'd like to give... Very Dickensian, which I love, with a large cast of characters & trials and tribulations ending with punishment for the wicked and virtue rewarded.
    • 3/5
      With the completion of this novel, I have now read every Dickens novel at least once in my lifetime. I have to say this is not one I am likely to read ever again, certainly not in a hurry. I found it difficult to be get absorbed in, in part as there is no strong central character with whom I as a reader can empathise: Paul Dombey senior is a cold and callous father, obsessed with the future of his business and dynasty, and cruelly neglectful of his daughter Florence, especially after the death of his sickly son Paul junior aged six. These offspring are archetypal Dickens child characters: the death of Paul is like a male version of the death of Little Nell in Old Curiosity Shop, while Florence, the leading female character, is a bland and beautiful cipher, arousing sympathy only due to the plight of her near orphan status, abandoned by her father and her mother having died at Paul junior's birth. Edith Skewton, Dombey's second wife is slightly more interesting and tragic in a different way, having been effectively "bought" by her husband as a trophy wife. As often, some of the lesser characters are more interesting and colourful, such as Mr Toots, Susan Nipper, Old Mrs Brown, and Captain Cuttle. Dickens's usual portrayals of abject poverty are rarer in this novel, mostly through the tragic figure of Alice, Good Mrs Brown's betrayed daughter. There is a much redemption and a lot of marriages in the last few chapters. As a curiosity, this novel also gives an interesting description of the coming of the railways in the 1830s, depicting them as a noisy and chaotically violent disruption of the landscape.
    • 3/5
      One of Dickens' longest novels charts the history of the Dombey family - the father who owns the business and wants to leave it to his son, and the daughter he ignores. Not Dickens' best - the novel needs more focus than it has, and moves too slowly. There's his common problem as well, that the daughter Florence is an odd mix of purity and total lack of self-esteem; she is hard to believe in, and occasionally made me uncomfortable when her endlessly submissive behaviour was presented as some sort of feminine ideal. That said, there is some great writing, some fun characters and great scenes, even if he never really nails it like he does in other books. One for Dickens completists.
    • 4/5
      Although this is not one of Dickens’ more well-known novels, and it is described as problematic, I found it quite engrossing and rewarding. Certainly, it does not have the lightheartedness of some of Dickens’ other novels, and in the psychological complexity, it reminded me more of Henry James than of Dickens. Chronologically, it comes just before his more mature biographical books, and looks like a step towards those books.The story of Paul Dombey junior, who has a sad life and dies early, is sentimental, although Dickens shows his skill in touching the reader in such a simple story. The story of Paul Dombey senior is sadder in his (almost) life-long arrogance, pride and emotional withdrawal. His sentimental turn at the end is undeserved, merely the contrivance needed to make the Victorian readers buy the next issue. The story of Mrs. Dombey, although heavily contrived as well, is the set-up needed to explore the relationship between Dombey and those around him. She is excluded from power by the social mores of the time, and escapes only be running away with her cousin, but the psychological fight between her and her husband is epic. It makes the pain, fury and frustration of her situation clear, and could stand as an early look at women’s property and marital rights, much like the Galsworthy saga did much later.The story of Florence, Dombey’s daughter, is the emotional centre of the story, although a highly idealized one, weakened for a modern audience by her flawless purity and self-sacrifice. In spite of that, a reader has to sympathize with her as a lonely, motherless child who wants only to get some recognition from her father but who is completely ignored by him. When she is used as a tool to poison and manipulate the life of her step-mother, you have to feel for her emotional anguish, and feel relief when she is finally able to leave the family home and find a blissful life with her true love.The minor characters, as in the best of Dickens, are droll and entertaining caricatures. Their sub-plots are not very credible, but they lighten a tone that would otherwise be very somber, and they also give a social context in which the psychological drama of the main characters has to be understood.This was a long slow read, but I enjoyed coming back to it and felt some sadness as it came to its final end.
    • 4/5
      I'm actually surprised that this one isn't covered more in schools, except for the length. Which is extreme, even for a Dickens novel. It is an interesting story and somewhat complex. I have to say that the character of Edith was more interesting to me than most of the other Dombeys, but she seemed less like a caricature than many of Dickens's characters. All that rage is certainly something.

      Anyway. Lovely read.
    • 1/5
      Definitely not Dickens at his best. I would not recommend, even to those who typically enjoy his oeuvre of work. Yuck.
    • 5/5
      Reading Dickens in publication order, this novel stands out. For the first time Dickens outlined his plot in advance and coordinated every element toward its fulfilment. The subplots are thoroughly tied in and there's foreshadowing nearly from the beginning. The feel is less chaotic, but the core elements of a Dickens novel are still present: rapidly drawn characters that instantly appear fully formed, the coy humour, the social commentary and shots at the upper class. He also winds up the story in his typical way, which is perhaps the one aspect I'm finding growing old after reading seven of these. The newfound structure is almost too rigid, its moral so clear from the get-go that it leaves only the procedure of its delivery. In the case of most classics I recommend knowing key plot points in advance to witness how they artfully unfold, but in this instance so much is telegraphed that it's worth maintaining the little suspense remaining.There's more urban scenes this time than rural, wealthy homes and businesses predominating. Dickens supplies another host of memorable characters, the stalwart Susan Nipper and do-gooder Captain Cuttle being particular favourites of mine. I was impressed at first with the villain, but I was certain there were more evil machinations in play than that. For a novel so obviously centered on Dombey Sr., I found it surprising how rarely we got into his head. We don't know what justification lies behind his pride, what his relationship with his own father was like or how good he actually is at his job. He shares almost nothing of himself and remains mostly an enigma, arguably the flattest character in Dickens' repertoire (so far). Contrast him with Edith, who shares his degree of pride but has some intriguing layers and was arresting in all of her scenes.All my complaining aside, this was a step up from his last two or three novels. I'm looking forward to where Dickens' new devotion to structure will take him, knowing that most of his best-known titles still lie ahead.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book, even though it's sort of standard Dickens and the outcome is no surprise. Still, the writing is so delightful, and the characters are varied and complex. I especially like the focus on women, and the fact that he made many of the female characters multi-dimensional.
    • 3/5
      Dickens' seventh major work, and about half-way through his life's works (which I am reading/re-reading in his 200th anniversary year).While earlier works have a "boys own annual" feel to them, this is a more mature and complex book. While Dickens still annoys with his fantastic coincidences to bring his artificial plots together, in this book there are some interesting and developed characters. Florence, who feels it is somehow her fault that her father doesn't love her, has a modern feel. A comment passed about Dombey, who is obsessively proud, is informative: "Vices are sometimes virtues taken to excess".I find it interesting that in his works, Dickens has multiple examples of strong, loving, brother-sister relationships, but almost no happy married couples of any depth. I wonder what this tells of his own background?Darwin continues his social themes, in this work he often highlights the "depravity" deplored by the upper class is often a result of the blighted environment of the poorer peoples. He also points out that the same "depravity" has different consequences in different social stratas - the upper class can effectively sell daughters into a moneyed marriage, while the same process is called prostitution further down the social scale.I see in Wikipedia that an early critic faulted the plot structure, saying that the death of Dombey Junior was effectively the end of the story, but I didn't find that fault. It was clear that Florence was going to be the hero - would she become the surrogate son? Would she be successful in some other way? Would there be a future marriage and further son? Many possibilities.The book is L O N G, as usual. And Dickens tests his readers. A Mr Morfin re-appears on page 681. How many readers recall his last appearance on page 175?? I could only do so courtesy of the word search function in ebooks. The book also has the usual complement of comic characters who regularly appear and regularly use the same "gags" for the same laughs: Capt Cuttle using nonsense nautical jargon; Major Bagstock endlessly referring to himself in the third person, and many other formulaic characters. It would seem that these were popular and sold the monthly parts. :) So, a good book, with many of the usual flaws of Dickens, balanced by some vibrant writing. Read February 2012.
    • 2/5
      "for not an orphan in the world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent's love"The Dombey of the title is the wealthy owner of a shipping company who dreams of having a son and heir who will be able to carry on the family business. Dombey gets his wish but when she dies shortly after the birth, she leaves her son, Paul, to become the sole focus of his father’s attention despite Dombey already having a six-year-old daughter, Florence. Florence loves her father and does her best to please him, but it’s obvious that all of Dombey’s hopes and ambitions lie with Paul and that Florence is simply an inconvenience.For Dombey the world exists only to further the interests of his family business and consequently the plot revolves around the destruction of Dombey's arrogant, selfish pride and whether or not he will ever come to love and value his daughter as she deserves.This is a hefty tome numbering well in excess of 900 pages but thankfully there aren't too many characters to get confused about and some of these like Major Bagstock, Sir Barnet Skettles and Cousin Feenix actually add little to the central plot. There is however, a cracking villain, James Carker, the scheming manager of Dombey and Son, with gleaming white teeth and a devious brain. There are also some great minor characters, in particular Captain Cuttle, the kind-hearted retired sea captain with a hook for a hand, and Susan Nipper, Florence’s loyal nurse; one of the few people who stands up to Dombey over his neglect of his daughter. It's this last character that is particularly interesting. Dickens gets a lot of criticism for his treatment of female characters but the women in this book are well-drawn and interesting. Yes, Florence can be too good to be true at times, but her father’s rejection of her is so cruel and hurtful that it’s impossible not to have sympathy for her. Her stepmother, Edith Dombey, though, a woman filled with self-loathing after being pushed into marriage by her mother, who then decides to take her fate into her own hands is the strongest female characters that I’ve come across in a Dickens novel thus far. The novel really shines a light on the oppressed position of women in society at that time and I found the faded gentility of Mrs Chark and Louisa Tox quite enlightening as well.This is my fifth Dickens novel to date and my least favourite thus far. Although I enjoyed parts, other sections dragged and it seemed to lack some of the subtle humour that I had come to expect in his works. I also felt that the absence of a 'hero' meant that the plotting and structure felt a little off.
    • 5/5
      I first read this book about 30 years ago and immediately declared it to be one of my favorite books of all time. Sometimes those feelings don't stand the test of time so well. But sometimes they do. I love this book. I love the kind, loving, wonderful (yet very put upon) Florence. I love the brave, honorable, loving Walter Gay. I love the insanely weird (but loving) Captain Cuttle and Mr. Toots. I love little Paul and Solomon Gills and Susan Nipper and Polly and Diogenes. I even love the complex characters of Edith and Alice. And, although I can't say that I love them, Mr. Dombey and James Carker and Mrs. Brown and Cleopatra are oh so good at being oh so bad.To me, Dombey and Son is the most entertaining of Dicken's books. His take on how women (in all aspects of life) are treated during the Victorian era is excellent. Whether it's a wet nurse who is treated abysmally or an unwanted and neglected daughter or a haughty wife who refuses to be tamed by her husband or a beautiful woman who is ruined forever by a cruel and heartless man, the hits keep coming. The plot, as with all Dicken's novels, is very, very convoluted, but there seem to be fewer loose threads than in some of his works. Since most of his works were serialized first, you sometimes get the feeling that he changed courses during the writing at times and left a few things unresolved. But that is not the case in Dombey and Son. The plot may be convoluted, but it is still tight. All characters of note are accounted for in the end.I love a good story and I love great characters. It is hard for me to get into a novel that doesn't have a traditional plot (think James Joyce) or has only unlikeable characters (yes, I'm talking about you, Of Human Bondage!) no matter how beautiful the writing is. That's why I love Dicken's novels. He always delivers one helluva story with memorable and mostly likeable characters (outside of the villains). And between plot, character and the focus on women, Dicken's delivers a wonderful book. It has stood the test of time and is still one of my very favorite books.
    • 4/5
      I told my daughter"I'm reading this book by Charles Dickens, THe only one of his that I haven't read, and it's about this rich asshole who thinks he's better than everybody else, and ignores his daughter because she's female." "Why, mama," she says, "do you want to read a book like that?" "Because," I answered, "I can't wait for his downfall." Well, it takes a long time (this book is 800-some pages long), but he does get his come-uppance, though thanks to the generosity of Mr. Dickens, the ending is good for all involved.

      Florence Dombey is the star of the show.

    Book preview

    Dombey and Son - Charles Dickens

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