This course examines Charles Dickens’s unmatched depictions of the Law in its impact on individuals and as a character in its own right – as a powerful, pervasive system. Through a close reading of Dickens’s novels in the light of contemporary legal reforms, students consider how Dickens dramatizes the 19th-century laws of marriage, inheritance, debt, and capital punishment – through depictions of their ramifications for “illegitimate” children, vagrants, laborers, and prisoners. Readings extend from Dickens’s earliest fiction and journalism to his masterworks Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and A Tale of Two Cities.