Amy Dorrit (known as Little Dorrit) was born in the Marshalsea debtors' prison in London. She has lived there with her father and two elder siblings for all of her twenty-two years, only leaving to work each day as a seamstress for the forbidding Mrs Clennam. But Amy's fortunes are about to change: the arrival of Mrs Clennam's son Arthur, back from working in China, heralds the beginning of stunning revelations not just about Amy but also about Arthur himself.