Great Expectations is written by English author Charles Dickens. The book was published serially in the journal All the Year Round in 1860–61 and issued in book form in 1861. The novel traces the prospects of a poor young man — Pip — who is educated as a gentleman of “great expectations.” Written in the first-person narrative, the story tells the saga of Pip (Philip Pirrip) who is looked after by his disagreeable sister and her sweet-natured husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery. One day, the young Pip helps an escaped convict. Later on, Abel Magwitch, the convict he once aided dies awaiting trial after Pip is unable to help him a second time. It was Joe who rescued Pip from despair and nursed him back to health. Like David Copperfield, the novel draws on parts of Dickens’s own personality and experience. Many consider Great Expectations as the most finely achieved novel by Dickens. Pip, the main protagonist, is explored with great subtlety, and his development through a childhood and youth is traced sympathetically.
About the Author
Dickens used humor wonderfully to liven up the dark truths of his novels. In the 1840s, he refined his style, widening his range with literary devices such as symbolism. In Bleak House, for example, he uses the toxic London fog to symbolize society’s ills toward the downtrodden. Dickens offered funny, irreverent characters and situations in the volume of works he had written.
