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1820s: The story of a family forced to live in a prison
Little Dorrit (Real Reads)
What you need to know before your trail
Many years ago, people were put in prison for debt. This is the story of one poor gentleman who was brought to the Marshalsea prison. Unable to pay any of his debt, soon his wife and children came to live with him. The three children played in the courtyard, and on the whole were happy, for they were too young to remember anything else. The prison with its high walls became their 0nly home.
But the youngest child, who has known nothing else soon begins to realise that not everyone lived locked up inside high walls with spikes at the top. Soon she starts to dream of life on the outside..
Travel Guide
The Marshalsea Prison
In London, William Dorrit, imprisoned as a debtor, has been in Marshalsea debtors’ prison for so long that his three children – including little Dorrit) — have all grown up there, although they are free to pass in and out of the prison as they please.
Dickens’s own father had been imprisoned here and so Dickens got to know and experience for himself the trials and poverty associated with the prison. He also attacks the class system and the goverment calling the British Treasury, in the form of his fictional “Circumlocution Office”
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: Little Dorrit (Real Reads)
Author/Guide: Charles Dickens Destination: London, Venice, Rome Departure Time: 1800s
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