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Paul Dombey, a proud, cold London merchant, cares about one thing: that his firm should be 'Dombey and Son'. When his wife dies giving birth to the long-awaited son, little Paul, he pours all his hopes into the frail boy and coldly ignores his loving daughter Florence. The story follows the family through grief, a disastrous second marriage to the haughty Edith Granger and the fall of the firm, while Florence goes on hoping for her father's love.
Context and significance
Published in monthly parts from 1846 to 1848, Dombey and Son is often seen as the first novel Dickens carefully planned around a single theme, pride, and it vividly captures the railways that were then tearing through London's old streets. Read also David Copperfield, which followed it, and see his life.
About the author
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) worked in a boot-blacking factory as a boy while his father was in a debtors' prison, and poverty and wronged childhood run through his novels, from Oliver Twist to the largely autobiographical David Copperfield.