Title: Great Expectations
First published: January 1950
Description: Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman; a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens' second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, Chapman and Hall published the novel in three volumes.

The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is full of extreme imagery – poverty, prison ships and chains, and fights to the death – and has a colourful cast of characters who have entered popular culture. These include the eccentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold Estella, and Joe, the unsophisticated and kind blacksmith. Dickens's themes include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil. Great Expectations, which is popular both with readers and literary critics, has been translated into many languages and adapted numerous times into various media.
Subjects: Authors, Benefactors, Bildungsromans, Boys, British and irish fiction (fictional works by one author), Child and youth fiction, Classic Literature, Coming of age, Conduct of life, Criticism and interpretation, Description and travel, Drama, English fiction, English literature, English Manuscripts, Ex-convicts, Facsimiles, Family, Fiction, History, Industrial revolution, Inheritance and succession, Man-woman relationships, Manners and customs, Manuscripts, Newspapers, Open Library Staff Picks, open_syllabus_project, Orphans, Pirates, Politics and government, Poor children, Readers, Readers (Adult), Readers for new literates, Revenge, Roman, Social classes, Social conditions, Social history, Social life and customs, Study guides, Working class, Young men, Adaptations, England, fiction, Dickens, charles , 1812-1870, Young men--england--fiction, Man-woman relationships, fiction, Fiction, coming of age, English drama, Texts, Fiction, general, Orphans, fiction, Manners and customs, fiction, Fiction, religious, Fiction, historical, general, English language, Reference books, Long Now Manual for Civilization, Man-woman relationship, American Experimental fiction, Specimens
Places: England, Great Britain, United States, Canada, Italy, Kent, Barnard's Inn, London (England), Richmond, New South Wales
People: Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Philip Pirrip, Joe Gargery, Georgiana Maria Gargery, Mr Pumblechook, Miss Havisham, Estella, Matthew Pocket, Herbert Pocket, Camilla, Raymond, Georgiana, Sarah Pocket, Mrs Hubble, Mr Hubble, Biddy, Mr Jaggers, John Wemmick, Molly, Compeyson, Arthur Havisham, Dolge Orlick, Bentley Drummle, Clara Barley, Miss Skiffins, Startop
Time periods: 19th century