Considered by many to be Dickens' finest novel, Great Expectations traces the growth of the book's narrator, the orphan Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man with depth of character. From its famous dramatic opening on the bleak Kentish marshes, the story abounds with some of Dickens' most memorable characters. Among them are the kindly blacksmith Joe Gargery, the mysterious convict Abel Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Havisham and her beautiful ward Estella, Pip's good-hearted room-mate Herbert Pocket and the pompous Pumblechook. As Pip unravels the truth behind his own 'great expectations' in his quest to become a gentleman, the mysteries of the past and the convolutions of fate through a series of thrilling adventures serve to steer him towards maturity and his most important discovery of all - the truth about himself.

Great Expectations, Dickens's thirteenth novel, was first published in the pages of his weekly magazine All the Year Round between December i86o and August i86I. Although itwas begun in some haste, with little time for the careful forward planning that had marked its predecessors,it is nevertheless one of the best organised and most well constructed of all novels, with scarcely a wasted gesture, character or event. As one gets to know the book, it seems as if there is no fat at all on it, no detail that does not resonate with the whole. Each episode, from the appearance of the mysterious convict in the first chapter to the ambiguities of the final scene, is important in its own right, adds to the richly symbolic structure of the book and plays its part in the shapely and decisive plot.When he wrote Great Expectations, Dickens had been at the top of the literary tree for the best part of a quarter of a century. He was the author of novels that had shaped the literature of the age and the creator of characters that had become proverbial.

Pip waits on Miss Havisham

Old Orlick among the cinders

Lecturing on capitol

A rubber at Miss Havisham's

Taking leave of yoe

'Don't go home,'

On the marshes, by the limekilm

With Estella after all