Pickwick Club: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens -- Book 2, Chapter 12-19
Channel: The Dickens Project
Date: 28/02/2024

New this year, we will be devoting an entire year to one novel instead of two, and will dive deeply into Great Expectations. Join Dickens enthusiasts and Pickwick Club members for a series of discussions about this book.

Charles Dickens depicts how a gentleman is made, not born, in this novel. Presented as Pip's confessional autobiography, Great Expectations describes his childhood at the forge, his infatuation with the beautiful Estella, his shame at his working-class origin and his eagerness to be a gentleman, and eventually his life as a young man-about-town with "great expectations" of inheriting a fortune. Recalling these events as an adult, Mr. Pirrip is frank about his mistakes and shortcomings.

Recommended Edition: We recommend the Penguin Classics edition of the novel for its appendices and notes, but other versions are fine. First-time readers should avoid the Introduction if they don't want spoilers. Download the novel to read at Gutenburg.org or to listen at LibriVox.org.
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The Santa Cruz Pickwick (Book) Club, a branch of the Dickens Fellowship, is a community of local bookworms, students, and teachers who meet monthly to discuss a nineteenth-century novel. The Santa Cruz Public Libraries provide support for the reading group.