Physical description

Hard Cover edition, Dombey and Son.
Author: Charles Dickens.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, London.
Date: 1930s-1950 reprinted Oxford literary edition. Original first published in 1848 (See note section this document for more information on Edition).
Blue leather hardcover, Spine has Author and Title in gold lettering. The spine has a Library label and no Volume information.

Publication type

fiction

Inscriptions & markings

The label on the spine with typed text PAT. 823. DIC
Front fly cover has Title and Publisher Details that match a Oxford literary reprinted edition between the 1930s to 1950.

Summary

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was one of the great English novelists of the Victorian era, famous for vivid characters, social criticism, and stories that were first published in serial form. He began as a journalist, rose to enormous popularity during his lifetime, and wrote major works such as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Great Expectations.
“Dombey and Son” is about Paul Dombey, a proud London businessman obsessed with having a son to inherit his firm. The story follows the emotional damage this causes to his neglected daughter Florence and to his family generally. It is one of Dickens’s major middle period novels and is often read as a critique of money, social ambition, industrial modernity, and damaged family life. The plot centres on Mr. Dombey, who values business and inheritance above affection, and on Florence, the daughter he cannot properly love because she is not the son he wanted. The novel shows the consequences of emotional blindness through illness, death, failed marriage, betrayal, and eventual partial reconciliation. In broad terms, it is a novel about pride, grief, commercial values, and the human cost of treating people like assets.