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Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
About the author
Charles Dickens, the son of John and Elizabeth Dickens, was born in Landport
on 7th February 1812.
John Dickens worked as a clerk at the Navy pay office in Portsmouth. He later found work in Chatham and Charles, the second of seven children, went to the local school.
John Dickens found it difficult to provide for his growing family on his meager income. In 1822 the family moved to Camden Town in London. John Dickens' debts had become so severe that all the household goods were sold. Still unable to satisfy his creditors, John Dickens was arrested and sent to Marshalsea Prison. The entire family, apart from Charles, were sent to Marshalsea along with their patriarch.
Charles, now aged twelve, found work at Warren's Blacking Factory, where
he was paid six shillings a week wrapping shoe-black bottles. Six months
after being sent to Marshalsea, one of John Dickens's relatives died. He
was left enough money in the will to pay off his debts and to leave prison.
Some of the inheritance was used to educated Charles at a nearby private school, Wellington House Academy. Charles was only a moderate student and at the age of fifteen he left school and found work as an office boy in a firm of solicitors. Charles disliked the work but he did enjoy walking the streets in the evening observing the people of London.
Like many others, he began his literary career as a journalist. His own father became a reporter and Charles began with The Mirror of Parliament and The True Sun. Then in 1833 he became parliamentary journalist for The Morning Chronicle. With new contacts in the press he was able to publish a series of sketches under the pseudonym 'Boz'. In April 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of George Hogarth who edited Sketches by Boz. Within the same month came the publication of the highly successful Pickwick Papers, and from that point on there was no looking back.
As well as a huge list of novels he published autobiography, edited weekly periodicals including Household Words and All Year Round, wrote travel books and administered charitable organisations. He was also a theatre enthusiast, wrote plays and performed before Queen Victoria in 1851. His energy was inexhaustible and he spent much time abroad - for example lecturing against slavery in the United States and touring Italy with companions Augustus Egg and Wilkie Collins, a contemporary writer who inspired Dickens' final unfinished novel Mystery of Edwin Drood.
He was estranged from his wife in 1858 after the birth of their ten children, maintained relations with his mistress, the actress Ellen Ternan and died of a stroke in 1870. He is buried at Westminster Abbey.
About the book
One of Dickens’ shorter novels and also one of his most influential is Great Expectations. It appeared initially in serial form in All The Year Round between 1860 and 1861 and is now considered to be one of his finest novels. It concerns the young boy Philip Pirrip (known as ‘Pip’) and his development through life after an early meeting with the escaped convict Abel Magwitch, who he treats kindly despite his fear. His unpleasant sister and her humorous and friendly blacksmith husband, Joe, bring him up. Crucial to his development as an individual is his introduction to Miss Havisham (one of Dickens’ most brilliant portraits), a now aging woman who has given up on life after being jilted at the altar. Cruelly, Havisham has brought up her daughter Estella to revenge her own pain and so as Pip falls in love with her she is made to torture him in romance. Aspiring to be a gentleman despite his humble beginnings, Pip seems to achieve the impossible by receiving a fund of wealth from an unknown source and being sent to London with the lawyer Jaggers. He is employed but eventually loses everything and Estella marries another. His benefactor turns out to have been Magwitch and his future existence is based upon outgrowing the great expectations and returning to Joe and honest labour. Eventually he is reunited with Estella.
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