Great Expectations - Literary Touchstone Edition

Front Cover
Prestwick House, Incorporated, 2006 - Fiction - 472 pages
This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classic? includes a glossary and reader?s notes to help the modern reader contend with Dickens? complex approach to the human condition.The first installment of Great Expectations, Charles Dickens? ?lucky thirteenth novel,? appeared in December 1860 and has been delighting readers ever since. An anonymous benefactor plucks young Pip from his life of toil as a blacksmith?s apprentice and thrusts him into London society as a ?gentleman of great expectations.? When a mysterious figure from his forgotten past re-emerges, however, every assumption on which Pip based his hopes is exposed as a delusion. How can Pip make amends to the loved ones he left behind, and how can he hope to ever win the affection of the woman he loves, but who is now forever beyond his reach?Great Expectations contains some of Dickens? most memorable characters?the affable blacksmith Joe Gargery, the beautiful yet haughty Estella, the enigmatic Miss Havihsam, and the menacing convict, Magwitch?and puts a uniquely Dickensian spin on the age-old Cinderella story.

About the author (2006)

Charles Dickens, perhaps the best British novelist of the Victorian era, was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England on February 7, 1812. His happy early childhood was interrupted when his father was sent to debtors' prison, and young Dickens had to go to work in a factory at age twelve. Later, he took jobs as an office boy and journalist before publishing essays and stories in the 1830s. His first novel, The Pickwick Papers, made him a famous and popular author at the age of twenty-five. Subsequent works were published serially in periodicals and cemented his reputation as a master of colorful characterization, and as a harsh critic of social evils and corrupt institutions. His many books include Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, A Christmas Carol, and A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens married Catherine Hogarth in 1836, and the couple had nine children before separating in 1858 when he began a long affair with Ellen Ternan, a young actress. Despite the scandal, Dickens remained a public figure, appearing often to read his fiction. He died in 1870, leaving his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished.

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