Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

Overview

Great Expectations follows the life of the orphan, Pip. We first meet him as a tiny, terrified child in a village churchyard. Years later, through the help of an anonymous benefactor, Pip will travel to London, full of expectations to become a gentleman. But his life is already inextricably tangled in a mystery that surrounds a beautiful woman, an embittered recluse, and an ambitious lawyer.

Great Expectations is both a finely crafted novel and an acute examination of Victorian society. Filled with unforgettable settings and characters, it achieves greater dramatic richness through Frank Muller's masterful narration. Dickens supplied two endings to this great work. Both are included in the recording.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780142423356
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	09/13/2012
Series:	Puffin Classics Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English author who achieved tremendous popularity during his lifetime and whose fiction, some of the most memorable and enduring of the Victorian era, is still beloved today. His compelling storytelling, vivid, often eccentric, characters and immersive descriptions of everyday life were lent depth by a profound compassion for victims of injustice and enhanced by sharp plotting that often used suspense and cliffhangers to ensure his readers were held rapt. People and details from his own, often hardscrabble, youth gave life to novels like Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations and others.

Date of Birth:

February 7, 1812

Date of Death:

June 18, 1870

Place of Birth:

Portsmouth, England

Place of Death:

Gad's Hill, Kent, England

Education:

Home-schooling; attended Dame School at Chatham briefly and Wellington

Read an Excerpt

Chapter I.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Great Expectations"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Charles Dickens.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Young Readers Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

	Introduction	vii
	Chronology of Charles Dickens's Life and Work	xv
	Historical Context of Great Expectations	xvii
	Great Expectations	1
	The Original Ending of Great Expectations	599
	Notes	601
	Interpretive Notes	614
	Critical Excerpts	621
	Questions for Discussion	631
	Suggestions for the Interested Reader	633

What People are Saying About This

George Gissing

Observe how finely the narrative is kept in one key. It begins with a mournful impession—the foggy marshes spreading drearily by the seaward Thames—and throughout recurs this effect of cold and damp and dreariness; in that kind Dickens never did anything so good.... No story in the first person was ever better told.

From the Publisher

"Dickens's figures belong to poetry, like figures of Dante or Shakespeare, in that a single phrase, either by them or about them, may be enough to set them wholely before us."  —T.S. Eliot

"All his characters are my personal friends—I am constantly comparing them with living persons, and living persons with them."  —Tolstoy

"Psychologically the latter part of Great Expectations is about the best thing Dickens ever did."  —George Orwell

John Irving

Great Expectations is the first novel I read that made me wish I had written it; it is the novel that made me want to be a novelist—specifically, to move a reader as I was moved then. I believe that Great Expectations has the most wonderful and most perfectly worked-out plot for a novel in the English language; at the same time, it never deviates from its intention to move you to laugher and tears.

Reading Group Guide

Pip, a poor orphan being raised by a cruel sister, does not have much in the way of great expectations between his terrifying experience in a graveyard with a convict named Magwitch and his humiliating visits with the eccentric Miss Havisham's beautiful but manipulative niece, Estella, who torments him until he is elevated to wealth by an anonymous benefactor. Full of unforgettable characters, Great Expectations is a tale of intrigue, unattainable love, and all of the happiness money can't buy. Great Expectations has the most wonderful and most perfectly worked-out plot for a novel in the English language, according to John Irving, and J. Hillis Miller declares, Great Expectations is the most unified and concentrated expression of Dickens's abiding sense of the world, and Pip might be called the archetypal Dickens hero.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Mr. Dickens may be reasonably proud of these volumes.... he has written a story that is new, original, powerful and very entertaining.... It is in his best vein, and although it is too slight, and bears many traces of hasty writing, it is quite worthy to stand beside Martin Chuzzlewit and David Copperfield.
—July 20, 1861

Saturday Review

Returning to print after more than a decade, this first volume in the relaunch of the Classics Illustrated series presents a handsomely rendered adaptation of the orphaned Pip's first-person narrative of his journey from humble childhood to adulthood as an English gentleman. Though quite involving, this retelling of the Dickens classic registers as a "fast forward" version of the epic tale of one man's evolution and the hard lessons learned from it, but that aspect is a minor quibble shoved aside by Geary's charmingly cartoony art. Long hailed for his unique work in such diverse showcases as the New York Times, National Lampoon and his exceptional continuing series A Treasury of Victorian Murder, Geary's fleshy characterizations breathe a near-animated life into the classic tale. This pleasant graphic interpretation can serve as an introduction to Dickens for younger readers and perhaps eventually steer them to the wider world of the source material and beyond. (Apr.)

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Publishers Weekly

Gr 7 Up

A young man's burning desire to fulfill his "great expectations" of fame and fortune is presented in Charles Dickens's classic tale of love, madness, forgiveness, and redemption. Simon Vance's masterful narration brings to life such diverse personalities as Miss Havisham, the old woman who was abandoned on her wedding day and is determined to wreak revenge through her beautiful adopted daughter Estella; Joe, Pip's lumbering and slow-witted, but emotionally wise and faithful friend; the mysterious Magwitch, a convict who turns out to be Pip's financial benefactor; and Pip, the boy who longs for a destiny greater than that of living out his days as a blacksmith's apprentice. The companion ebook features automatic start-up, keyword searching, PDF printable format, and table of contents. An exceptionally skilled rendering of this classic.-Cindy Lombardo, Cleveland Public Library, OH

School Library Journal

The notes to this edition of Great Expectations are extremely helpful, and the supporting materials are useful, clear, and well-selected. Law and Pinnington have put together an edition that takes into account what the contemporary (and especially, the non-British) reader needs in order to appreciate the novel. All in all, this is an excellent edition.” — Sally Mitchell, Temple University

“It is high time for this Dickens masterpiece to receive the kind of critical and contextual attention that this edition of Great Expectations affords. The editors provide essential information about Dickens’s compositional as well as publishing practices, and they further support this background with a sampling of the lively contemporary dialogue about the text in the periodicals of the day. They issues raised by the novel—namely class and language, and crime and punishment—are amply explored by pertinent historical documentation, including highly-charged autobiographical writing by Dickens himself that was not available to his contemporary readership. Moreover, the introduction expertly guides the reader though the application of these materials in a creative and inviting manner. Law and Pinnington have gathered together an impressive array of contemporary documents to promote an informed reading of this classic text … In particular, the maps and illustrations of the novel’s various settings allow the non-expert to quickly gain insights which should lead to intriguing arguments about how the novel has worked—for its own time as well as our own. I especially commend the editors for their resourceful choices related to the Victorian conception of what constitutes a true gentleman—itself perhaps the key question that helps to unlock the novel.” — Carol Hanbery MacKay, University of Texas-Austin

From the Publisher

"It is high time for this Dickens masterpiece to receive the kind of critical and contextual attention that this edition of Great Expectations affords. The editors provide essential information about Dickens's compositional as well as publishing practices, and they further support this background with a sampling of the lively contemporary dialogue about the text in the periodicals of the day. They issues raised by the novel—namely class and language, and crime and punishment—are amply explored by pertinent historical documentation, including highly-charged autobiographical writing by Dickens himself that was not available to his contemporary readership. Moreover, the introduction expertly guides the reader though the application of these materials in a creative and inviting manner. Law and Pinnington have gathered together an impressive array of contemporary documents to promote an informed reading of this classic text...In particular, the maps and illustrations of the novel's various settings allow the non-expert to quickly gain insights which should lead to intriguing arguments about how the novel has worked—for its own time as well as our own. I especially commend the editors for their resourceful choices related to the Victorian conception of what constitutes a true gentleman—itself perhaps the key question that helps to unlock the novel."

Carol Hanbery MacKay University of Texas - Austin

The notes to this edition of Great Expectations are extremely helpful, and the supporting materials are useful, clear, and well-selected. Law and Pinnington have put together an edition that takes into account what the contemporary (and especially, the non-British) reader needs in order to appreciate the novel. All in all, this is an excellent edition.”

Sally Mitchell Temple University

★ 08/01/2014
Expertly narrated by Simon Vance, with a PDF copy of the book included on the first disc. Great Expectations also won an Audie in 2010 for classic and solo narration—male (Audio Connoisseur, narrated by Charlton Griffin), but that edition will likely be more difficult for libraries to acquire.

Library Journal

A frustrated actor, Dickens himself entertained thousands in England and America with readings from his own books. But would his reading of GREAT EXPECTATIONS be better than this one? Not likely. American actor and audio superstar Frank Muller is known for authenticity of voices, outstanding interpretation, and sheer natural ability. His is a voice one could listen to forever--it is sonorous and mellow without any unpleasant raspiness. Perhaps Muller’s reading is a bit fast, but the dramatic intensity and nuance keep one from losing meaning. His characterizations are superb, expecially those of the imperious Jaggers, the sniveling Orlick and the confounding Magwitch. Muller’s great strength lies in his ability to project an ease of presentation that, when combined with his extraordinary emotional alertness, produces a most engaging effect. Surprisingly soft-spoken and confidential in tone, Muller’s Pip seems to be talking directly to the listener. Charles Dickens would have been pleased to know that his words are being recalled to life. P.W. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine

AUG 93 - AudioFile