Name: Great Expectations
Price: 45.98 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9781458340351

Type

Physical Book

Author

Charles Dickens

Publisher

Lulu.com

Language

English

Pages

400

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

21.0 x 14.8 x 2.3 cm

Weight

0.52 kg.

ISBN13

9781458340351

Synopsis "Great Expectations"

Great Expectations is Charles Dickens's thirteenth novel. It is his second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. Great Expectations is a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age novel, and it is a classic work of Victorian literature. It depicts the growth and personal development of an orphan named Pip. The novel was first published in serial form in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, Chapman and Hall published the novel in three volumes. Dickens originally intended Great Expectations to be twice as long, but constraints imposed by the management of All the Year Round limited the novel's length. The novel is collected and dense, with a conciseness unusual for Dickens. According to G. K. Chesterton, Dickens penned Great Expectations in "the afternoon of [his] life and fame." It was the penultimate novel Dickens completed, preceding Our Mutual Friend. It is set among the marshes of Kent and in London in the early to mid-1800s. The novel contains some of Dickens most memorable scenes, including its opening, in a graveyard, when the young orphan Pip is accosted by the escaped convict, Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is a graphic book, full of extreme imagery, poverty, prison ships ("the hulks"), barriers and chains, and fights to the death. Upon its release, Thomas Carlyle spoke of "All that Pip's nonsense." Later, George Bernard Shaw praised the novel as "All of one piece and consistently truthfull." Dickens felt Great Expectations was his best work, calling it "a very fine idea," and was very sensitive to compliments from his friends: "Bulwer, who has been, as I think you know, extraordinarily taken by the book." Great Expectations has a colourful cast that has entered popular culture: the capricious Miss Havisham, the cold and beautiful Estella, Joe the kind and generous blacksmith, the dry and sycophantic Uncle Pumblechook, Mr. Jaggers, Wemmick with his dual personality, and the eloquent and wise friend, Herbert Pocket. Throughout the narrative, typical Dickensian themes emerge: wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil. Great Expectations has become very popular and is now taught as a classic in many English classes. It has been translated into many languages and adapted many times in film and other media.

Charles Dickens

(Author)

View Author's Page

Charles Dickens (February 7, 1812 - June 9, 1870) was born in Portsmouth and was the eldest son of a Royal Navy clerk. At twelve, his father's imprisonment for debt forced him to work in a blacking factory. His education was sporadic: he taught himself shorthand, worked as a clerk in a law office, and eventually became a parliamentary correspondent for the Morning Chronicle.

Coming from a humble family, "good old Charles" did not receive formal education until he was nine, and was heavily criticized by the critics of the time for being too self-taught. His life took an unexpected turn with his father's imprisonment for debts, moving his family to live with him in jail, allowed at that time by British laws. At the age of 12, he was already considered fit to start working in a dye factory. Although his family's situation had improved, his mother insisted he keep working there, inspiring him to write one of his masterpieces, David Copperfield.

His articles, later collected in Scenes from London Life by "Boz" (1836-1837), were very successful, and with the appearance in 1837 of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Dickens became a true publishing phenomenon. Novels such as Oliver Twist (1837-1839), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), and Barnaby Rudge (1841) gained enormous popularity, as did some travel chronicles, such as Pictures from Italy (1846). With Dombey and Son (1846-1848) he began his mature period, of which good examples are David Copperfield (1849-1850), his first novel in the first person and his favorite, in which he developed some autobiographical episodes; Bleak House (1852-1853); Little Dorrit (1855-1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860-1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865). He died at Gad's Hill, his country house in Higham, in the county of Kent.

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