I am a great fan of Charles Dickens, and one of my favourite books is Bleak House. However, I have always had a problem with Mr Dickens in that many of his stories revolve around improbable events.
In the Tale of Two Cities, the similarity in appearance between Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton was such that on two occasions the courts, (one English and one French) could not determine who was who. It led to the famous execution of Carton under the blade of Madame Guillotine. (It is a far far better thing …)
In Oliver Twist, Oliver is rescued by Mr Brownlow who was an old friend of his father. The list goes on. All his novels depend on similarly outlandish coincidences or unlikely events to make them work.
In Bleak House, one of the villains, Krook dies of spontaneous combustion something that Dickens believed could happen, but which some critics of the novel such as the English essayist George Henry Lewes denounced as outlandish and implausible. I shared such sentiments and have always felt that it greatly damaged the credibility of Dickens and his otherwise wonderful book.
So I was delighted to read this article. Maybe Dickens was right after all.
Boadicea's Chariot 