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Great Expectations


Charles Dickens


This edition of Great Expectations is perfect for GCSE-level students: it comes complete with the novel, plus an introduction providing context, and a glossary explaining key terms.

‘Hold your noise!’ cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. ‘Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!’

So begins Charles Dickens’s 1861 bildungsroman, the story of the orphan Pip who is catapulted from the desolate Kent marshes of his childhood to become a young gentleman in London.

Who is Pip’s mysterious benefactor? And what role will the troubling figures of escaped convict Magwitch, decaying bride Miss Havisham and the beautiful but aloof Estella play in his prospects?

Told through the first-person voice of the older Pip, this story of great expectations suggests gains always come at a price. Dickens depicts both the horrors of the early nineteenth-century penal system and the rapid rise and fall of fortunes that Victorian society permitted.

Charles Dickens was born in 1812 near Portsmouth where his father was a clerk in the navy pay office. The family moved to London in 1823, but their fortunes were severely impaired. Dickens was sent to work in a blacking-warehouse when his father was imprisoned for debt. Both experiences deeply affected the future novelist. In 1833 he began contributing stories to newspapers and magazines, and in 1836 started the serial publication of Pickwick Papers. Thereafter, Dickens published his major novels over the course of the next twenty years, from Nicholas Nickleby to Little Dorrit. He also edited the journals Household Words and All the Year Round. Dickens died in June 1870.

Category: Classic Books, Classroom Classics
ISBN: 9780008325909
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
On sale: July 2021
Format: Paperback
eBook ISBN
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