Great Expectations

Synopsis

Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens, serialised in his weekly periodical All the Year Round from December 1860 to August 1861 and published in three volumes in October 1861. Told in the first person, it follows the growing up of Pip, an orphan who lives on the Kent marshes with his hot-tempered sister and her husband, Joe Gargery, a kindly blacksmith. One Christmas Eve, in the churchyard where his parents are buried, an escaped convict forces him to bring food and a file. Soon afterwards Pip begins to visit Miss Havisham, a rich and eccentric recluse who still wears her old wedding dress, and falls in love with Estella, her cold and beautiful adopted daughter. When an anonymous benefactor offers him the chance to become a gentleman in London, Pip must learn what truly gives a person their worth.