Penguin Classics: Dombey & Son

To Paul Dombey, business is everything. He runs his domestic affairs as he runs his firm: coldly, calculatingly and commercially, neglecting his daughter Florence. In Dombey’s mercantile terms, she is ‘merely a base coin that couldn’t be invested’.

Through this portrayal of a dysfunctional family, where hearts have no market value, Dickens creates a broader picture of a society that places profit above compassion. He also explores the possibility of redemption through familial love, for it is Dombey’s relationship with Florence, his emotional deprivation and eventual fulfilment that form the heart of the book.

Despite its world of bustling commerce, roaring streets and railways, Dombey and Son is in many ways ‘Dickens’s most domestic novel’. This volume uses the text of Dickens’s first edition of 1848.