Great Expectations

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Charles Dickens: Great Expectations (Paperback, 1996, Penguin Books)

Paperback, 512 pages

English language

Published Dec. 30, 1996 by Penguin Books.

ISBN:
978-0-14-043489-7
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OCLC Number:
36085668

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4 stars (2 reviews)

'Pip's expectation, before his expectations, is that he will be shown to have a!ready committed a crime,' writes David Trotter in his Introduction to this new edition. The orphan Pip's terrifying encounter with an escaped convict on the Kent marshes, and his mysterious summons to the house of Miss Havisham and her cold, beautiful ward Estella, form the prelude to his 'great expectations'. How Pip comes into a fortune, what he does with it, and what he discovers through his secret benefactor are the ingredients of his struggle for moral redemption.

Great Expectations was pubiished in three volumes in July 1861. According to Swinburne: 'This was the author's last great work, the defects in it are as nearly imperceptible as spots on the sun or shadows on a sunlit sea.'

131 editions

reviewed Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (Penguin Classics)

A good coming of age novel

4 stars

I'm enjoying my new tradition of reading a Charles Dickens novel in the runup to Christmas. I've watched several film and TV adaptations of his works over the years, but had been put off attempting the novels themselves by their length and the density if Dickens prose. As it turns out though, his vivid characterisations and melodramatic plots do suit my reading style pretty well. I'm not sure I would want to attempt more than one a year, but at that level of engagement the books are enjoyable and should last me a good decade yet. My choice for this year, Great Expectations, features the unexpected and exciting events of a Christmas Day for young Pip near the beginning of the novel so put me into a seasonal spirit!

I had only a vague recollection of watching a black and white Great Expectations film as a child (probably the 1946 …

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rated it

3 stars