Great Expectations

Great Expectations - Mass Market Paperbound

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Great Expectations
  • Great Expectations
Great Expectations - Mass Market Paperbound

Great Expectations - Mass Market Paperbound

by Charles Dickens
$7.95
$7.95

Book Overview

by Charles Dickens (Author), Stanley Weintraub (Introduction by), Annabel Davis-Goff (Afterword by)

From the agony of Charles Dickens' disenchantment with the Victorian middle class comes a profound novel of spellbinding mystery...

An orphan living with his older sister and her kindly husband, Pip is hired by wealthy and embittered Miss Havisham as a companion for her and her beautiful adopted daughter, Estella. His years in service to the Havishams fill his heart with the desire to rise above his station in life. Pip's wish is fulfilled when a mysterious benefactor provides him with "great expectations"--the means to be tutored as a gentleman.

Thrust into London's high-society circles, Pip grows accustomed to a life of leisure, only to find himself lacking as a suitor competing for Estella's favor. After callously discarding everything he once valued for his own selfish pursuits, Pip learns the identity of his patron--a revelation that shatters his very soul.

With an Introduction by Stanley Weintraub
and an Afterword by Annabel Davis-Goff

Author Biography

As a child, Charles Dickens (1812-70) came to know not only hunger and privation, but also the horror of the infamous debtors' prison and the evils of child labor. A surprise legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and "slave" factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years' formal schooling. He taught himself shorthand and worked as a parliamentary reporter until his writing career took off with the publication of Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837). As a novelist and magazine editor, Dickens had a long run of serialized success through Our Mutual Friend (1864-65). In later years, ill health slowed him down, but he continued his popular dramatic readings from his fiction to an adoring public, which included Queen Victoria. At his death, The Mystery of Edwin Drood remained unfinished.

Stanley Weintraub is the author or editor of more than fifty books of biography, culture history, and military history, including The London Yankees, Whistler, Victoria, and Uncrowned King: The Life of Prince Albert. He retired from Pennsylvania State University as Evan Hugh Professor Emeritus and director of Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies.

Annabel Davis-Goff is the author of The Dower House, This Cold Country, and The Fox's Walk. All three novels were selected by the New York Times as Notable Books. She is also the author of Walled Gardens, a family memoir, and is editor of The Literary Companion to Gambling. She now teaches literature at Bennington College.
Number of Pages: 528
Dimensions: 0.91 x 6.92 x 4.22 IN
Publication Date: February 03, 2009
Accelerated Reader:
Quiz Name: Great Expectations (Unabridged)
Interest Level: Upper Grades, 9-12
Reading Level: 9.2
Point Value: 35
ISBN9780451531186
Author Charles Dickens
PublisherSignet Book
GenreLiterature
FormatOther
PublishedFebruary 2009
LanguageENG- English
Pages528
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Classics Coming of Age Fiction Historical Fiction

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About Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsea, England. He died in Kent on June 9, 1870. The second of eight children of a family continually plagued by debt, the young Dickens came to know not only hunger and privation, but also the horror of the infamous debtors' prison and the evils of child labor. A turn of fortune in the shape of a legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and "slave" factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years' formal schooling at Wellington House Academy. He worked as an attorney's clerk and newspaper reporter until his Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life. In later years, the pressure of serial writing, editorial duties, lectures, and social commitments led to his separation from Catherine Hogarth after twenty-three years of marriage. It also hastened his death at the age of fifty-eight, when he was characteristically engaged in a multitude of work.

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