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Cover of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

  • 482 pages · about 8 hours
  • First published 1861
  • 1,489 editions
  • Free to read
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1 About this book

Pip is an orphan, brought up by his harsh sister and her gentle husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery, on the Kent marshes. As a small boy he is frightened into helping an escaped convict he meets in a churchyard. Later he is sent to play at the decaying house of Miss Havisham, a rich recluse, and there he falls in love with her proud, cold ward, Estella, and grows ashamed of his home. Then a lawyer brings astonishing news: an unnamed benefactor means to make Pip a gentleman, and he is to leave for London. Dickens's novel, narrated by the older Pip, was first published as a weekly serial in 1860 and 1861.

  • Bildungsromans
  • Classics
  • Coming of age
  • Industrial revolution
  • Relationships
  • Politics and government
  • Social history
  • Experimental fiction

2 What to expect

A coming-of-age novel narrated by Pip, an orphan from the Kent marshes who is suddenly given the means to become a London gentleman. Its subjects are class, snobbery, guilt and gratitude, and the older narrator judges his younger self without mercy. It is shorter and more tightly plotted than most Dickens, with comedy, mystery and some of his most memorable grotesques, and the Victorian sentences ask for a little patience.

Good for readers who want: a Dickens classic, a coming-of-age story, and mystery with social satire.

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4 About Charles Dickens

1812–1870

Charles John Huffam Dickens ( ; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and journalist. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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