Charles Dickens

Great Expectations Charles Dickens

This unabridged edition contains the endings of 1861 and 1868. Great Expectations is set among marshes in Kent and in London in the early to mid-1800s. The novel depicts the personal development of Philip Pirrip, an orphan nicknamed Pip. It has a cast of other characters who have entered popular culture: the bitter and excentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful Estella, the generous blacksmith Joe Gargery and Abel Magwitch, the very human convict. Pip lives with his older short-tempered sister, Georgiana Maria, and her husband, Joe. One day, while visiting the graves of his mother, father and siblings, Pip, who is about seven years old, encounters the escaped convict Magwitch. Soon after, he visits the mysterious Miss Havisham and her adopted daughter, Estella. Both events will impact his later life. Confronted with changes and desires, Pip is eager to grow, learn and achieve even what seems hopelessly beyond his reach... Great Expectations is Charles Dickens's last completed novel, a work of his artistic maturity and a classic of Victorian literature. Great Expectations has the most wonderful and most perfectly worked-out plot for a novel in the English language. -John Irving