Little Amy Dorrit was born in debtor's prison, the youngest child of William Dorrit, a long-time inmate of the Marshalsea. Earning meager wages as a seamstress, she is befriended by her employer's son, Arthur, who eventually helps to free Mr. Dorrit from prison. When William Dorrit inherits a fortune, the newly free and wealthy family travels to Italy.

Meanwhile, their benefactor falls on hard times when he becomes the victim of a gigantic fraud perpetrated by an eminent financier and is himself sentenced to the Marshalsea. Little Dorrit finds him there, and a relationship develops between them that juxtaposes ambition with humility, acquisitiveness with generosity, regret with optimism.

A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens's maturity.