Penguin Classics: Charles Dickens – Great Expectations

  • Edited by Charlotte Mitchell
  • Penguin
  • 9/1/2004
  • ISBN: 9780141439563

RRP: $14.99 (Inc. GST)

Description

Prescribed Text for HSC 2019-2023 – Advanced Module B: Critical Study of Literature

Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations – now a major new film from director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Harry Potter) – charts the course of orphan Pip Pirrip’s life as it is transformed by a vast, mysterious inheritance. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with notes by Charlotte Mitchell, and an introduction by David Trotter.

Adapted from Dickens’s novel by bestselling author David Nicholls (One Day), Great Expectations stars Ralph Fiennes (The Reader), Helena Bonham Carter (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) and Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) and also features Robbie Coltrane, David Walliams and Sally Hawkins.

A terrifying encounter with the escaped convict Abel Magwitch in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decrepit Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella at Satis House; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor – these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip’s life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble station as an apprentice to blacksmith Joe Gargery, beginning a new life as a gentleman. Charles Dickens’s haunting late novel depicts Pip’s education and development through adversity as he discovers the true nature of his identity, and his ‘great expectations’.
This definitive version uses the text from the first published edition of 1861. It includes a map of Kent in the early nineteenth century, and appendices on Dickens’s original ending and his working notes, giving readers an illuminating glimpse into the mind of a great novelist at work.

Charles Dickens is one of the best-loved novelists in the English language, whose 200th anniversary was celebrated in 2012. His most famous books, including Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield and The Pickwick Papers, have been adapted for stage and screen and read by millions.

‘Great Expectations is up there for me with the world’s greatest novels’ – Howard Jacobson


About the Author

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born in Hampshire on February 7, 1812. His father was a clerk in the navy pay office, who was well paid but often ended up in financial troubles. When Dickens was twelve years old he was send to work in a shoe polish factory because his family had been taken to the debtors’ prison. Fagin is named after a boy Dickens disliked at the factory. His career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays began to appear in periodicals. The Pickwick Papers, his first commercial success, was published in 1836. In the same year he married the daughter of his friend George Hogarth, Catherine Hogarth. The serialisation of Oliver Twist began in 1837 while The Pickwick Papers was still running. Many other novels followed and The Old Curiosity Shop brought Dickens international fame and he became a celebrity in America as well as Britain. He separated from his wife in 1858. Charles Dickens died on 9 June 1870, leaving his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

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