Charles Dickens: Great Expectations (1998)
544 pages
English language
Published 1998
Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens's second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial 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.The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is full of extreme imagery – poverty, prison ships and chains, and fights to the death – and has a colourful cast of characters who have entered popular culture. …
Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens's second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial 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.The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is full of extreme imagery – poverty, prison ships and chains, and fights to the death – and has a colourful cast of characters who have entered popular culture. These include the eccentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold Estella, and Joe, the unsophisticated and kind blacksmith. Dickens's themes include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil. Great Expectations, which is popular both with readers and literary critics, has been translated into many languages and adapted numerous times into various media. Upon its release, the novel received near universal acclaim. Although Dickens's contemporary Thomas Carlyle referred to it disparagingly as that "Pip nonsense," he nevertheless reacted to each fresh installment with "roars of laughter." Later, George Bernard Shaw praised the novel, as "All of one piece and consistently truthful." During the serial publication, Dickens was pleased with public response to Great Expectations and its sales; when the plot first formed in his mind, he called it "a very fine, new and grotesque idea."In the 21st century, the novel retains good ratings among literary critics and in 2003 it was ranked 17th on the BBC's The Big Read poll.
The beginning is great. But then it really gets boring...
I usually read all books till the end but had to stop reading because somehow my bookmarks were deleted and it was also too boring
A really well written story with some great characters and nice turn of events.
Frames a lots of aspects (about friendship, loyalty, love & more) in a single well developed story.
Well worth a reading.
Pervasive wit and interesting character studies are offset somewhat by a less-than-compelling main character and plot.
Most of Dickens' books tell basically the same story, but always with an eye for characters, and always with plenty of sympathy and humanity.
Here he is a little treacherous, first showing certain persons as contemptuous or disgusting, then only gradually unfolding their place in the great story. Disappointingly, the ending is a little rushed (especially given that he takes his usual 450 pages to get there), and leaves much to be desired. However, most of the threads get tied up, and it's refreshing that he doesn't see the need for a perfect happy-end this time.
Certainly not straight forward prose. It has rather a complicated plot. Tempo got faster towards the end with all its relevations, but as dramatic change it failed somehow. Syntax is also quite an challenge for an non-native English speaker
I really love this book. And I think about it every time someone dies because there is this lovely part after Joe dies where Dickens redefines the feeling of loss as connection. Read it right after my father died and it really made me look at it in a new way.
