Paperback, 482 pages
English language
Published Dec. 25, 2008 by Oxford University Press.
Young Pip lives with his sister and her husband the blacksmith, with few prospects for advancement until a mysterious benefaction takes him from the Kent marshes to London. Pip is haunted by figures from his past - the escaped convict Magwitch, the time-withered Miss Havisham and her proud and beautiful ward, Estella - and in time uncovers not just the origins of his great expectations but the mystery of his own heart.
A powerful and moving novel, Great Expectations is suffused with Dickens's memories of the past and its grip on the present, and it raises disturbing questions about the extent to which individuals affect each other's lives. This edition includes a lively introduction, Dickens's working notes, the novel's original ending, and an extract from an early theatrical adaptation. It reprints the definitive Clarendon text.
I enjoyed this novel more than I expected. Dickens writes very impressively, which maybe should not be a surprise but I imagined something more formal and tedious. He writes with a rhythm and some amazing turns of phrases. I am unfamiliar with the speech of the time to understand how much of what seems novel to me is merely the idiom of the time.
