The complex story of a notorious lawsuit in which love and inheritance are set against the classic urban background of 19th-century London, where fog on the river, seeping into the very bones of the characters, symbolizes the corruption of the legal system and the society which supports it.  Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer and social critic who is widely regarded as the greatest male novelist of the Victorian era. His best-known works include Bleak House , A Christmas Carol , A Tale of Two Cities , and The Pickwick Papers .