Bleak House was published in monthly parts in 1852-3. The typical Victorian way of publication (that is, to publish a book in series) inevitably affects a writer's organization of an organic book. On the one hand, it is impossible for the writer to correct what has been said or to add what has not been said; on the other hand, readers' opinion keeps influencing the writer on what he/she is going to write. Despite this difficulty, Dickens is a great artist in the writing of Bleak House, especially in his well-calculated structure.

In his famous Cornell lectures on Bleak House, Vladimir Nabokov said "[by structure], we mean the planned pattern of a work of art" (Dickens xii). Obviously the key word for structure is that it has to be "planned." In this sense, Bleak House is a book in which Dickens manages to plan and arrange everything...