{"product_id":"great-expectations-isbn-9780679405795","title":"Great Expectations","description":"\u003cp\u003eOne of Charles Dickens’s most fascinating novels, \u003ci\u003eGreat Expectations\u003c\/i\u003e follows the orphan Pip as he leaves behind a childhood of misery and poverty after an anonymous benefactor offers him a chance at the life of a gentleman. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the young Pip’s first terrifying encounter with the convict Magwitch in the gloom of a graveyard to the splendidly morbid set pieces in Miss Havisham’s mansion to the magnificently realized boat chase down the Thames, \u003ci\u003eGreat Expectations\u003c\/i\u003e is filled with the transcendent excitement that Dickens could so abundantly provide. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWritten in 1860, at the height of his maturity, it also reveals the novelist’s bittersweet understanding of the extent to which our deepest moral dilemmas are born of our own obsessions and illusions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis edition includes Dickens’s original, discarded conclusion to the novel, the 1907 Everyman preface by G. K. Chesterton, and twenty illustrations by F. W. Pailthorpe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e“\u003ci\u003eGreat Expectations\u003c\/i\u003e may be called a novel without a hero . . . In [it] Dickens was really trying to be a quiet, a detached, and even a cynical observer of human life . . . And the final and startling triumph of Dickens is this: that even to this moderate and modern story he gives an incomparable energy which is not moderate and which is not modern. He is trying to be reasonable; but in spite of himself he is inspired.” –G. K. Chesterton \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eGreat Expectations\u003c\/i\u003e [is] generally regarded as Dickens’s artistic masterpiece, and a novel profoundly serious in its psychological and sociological import . . . Dickens tell[s] a universal story of human passions, mutual exploitation, selfishness, self-delusion, and selflessness . . . [It] is the subtlest and most profound, as well as the most triumphantly achieved, of all his great novels.” –From the Introduction by Michael SlaterCHARLES DICKENS was born in a little house in Landport, Portsea, England, on February 7, 1812. The second of eight children, he grew up in a family frequently beset by financial insecurity. At age eleven, Dickens was taken out of school and sent to work in London backing warehouse, where his job was to paste labels on bottles for six shillings a week. His father John Dickens, was a warmhearted but improvident man. When he was condemned the Marshela Prison for unpaid debts, he unwisely agreed that Charles should stay in lodgings and continue working while the rest of the family joined him in jail. This three-month separation caused Charles much pain; his experiences as a child alone in a huge city–cold, isolated with barely enough to eat–haunted him for the rest of his life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the family fortunes improved, Charles went back to school, after which he became an office boy, a freelance reporter and finally an author. With \u003ci\u003ePickwick Papers\u003c\/i\u003e (1836–7) he achieved immediate fame; in a few years he was easily the post popular and respected writer of his time. It has been estimated that one out of every ten persons in Victorian England was a Dickens reader. \u003ci\u003eOliver Twist \u003c\/i\u003e(1837), \u003ci\u003eNicholas Nickleby \u003c\/i\u003e(1838–9) and \u003ci\u003eThe Old Curiosity Shop \u003c\/i\u003e(1840–41) were huge successes. \u003ci\u003eMartin Chuzzlewit \u003c\/i\u003e(1843–4) was less so, but Dickens followed it with his unforgettable, \u003ci\u003eA Christmas Carol \u003c\/i\u003e(1843), \u003ci\u003eBleak House \u003c\/i\u003e(1852–3), \u003ci\u003eHard Times\u003c\/i\u003e (1854) and\u003ci\u003e Little Dorrit \u003c\/i\u003e(1855–7)\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ereveal his deepening concern for the injustices of British Society. \u003ci\u003eA Tale of Two Cities \u003c\/i\u003e(1859), \u003ci\u003eGreat Expectations\u003c\/i\u003e (1860–1) and \u003ci\u003eOur Mutual Friend \u003c\/i\u003e(1864–5) complete his major works.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDickens's marriage to Catherine Hoggarth produced ten children but ended in separation in 1858. In that year he began a series of exhausting public readings; his health gradually declined. After putting in a full day's work at his home at Gads Hill, Kent on June 8, 1870, Dickens suffered a stroke, and he died the following day.Chapter I.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip,  my\u003cbr\u003e infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than\u003cbr\u003e Pip.  So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI give Pirrip as my father's  family name, on the authority of his tombstone\u003cbr\u003e and my sister – Mrs. Joe Gargery,  who married the blacksmith. As I never saw\u003cbr\u003e my father or my mother, and never saw  any likeness of either of them (for\u003cbr\u003e their days were long before the days of photographs),  my first fancies\u003cbr\u003e regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their\u003cbr\u003e tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea\u003cbr\u003e that he  was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the\u003cbr\u003e character and turn  of the inscription, \"Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,\"\u003cbr\u003e I drew a childish conclusion  that my mother was freckled and sickly. To\u003cbr\u003e five little stone lozenges, each about  a foot and a half long, which were\u003cbr\u003e arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and  were sacred to the memory of\u003cbr\u003e five little brothers of mine – who gave up trying to  get a living exceedingly\u003cbr\u003e early in that universal struggle – I am indebted for a belief  I religiously\u003cbr\u003e entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands  in\u003cbr\u003e their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of\u003cbr\u003e existence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within as the river wound,\u003cbr\u003e twenty  miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the\u003cbr\u003e identity of things,  seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw\u003cbr\u003e afternoon towards evening. At  such a time I found out for certain, that\u003cbr\u003e this bleak place overgrown with nettles  was the churchyard; and that Philip\u003cbr\u003e Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana  wife of the above, were\u003cbr\u003e dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham,  Tobias, and\u003cbr\u003e Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and\u003cbr\u003e that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes\u003cbr\u003e and mounds  and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes;\u003cbr\u003e and that the low  leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant\u003cbr\u003e savage lair from which the  wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the\u003cbr\u003e small bundle of shivers growing afraid  of it all and beginning to cry, was\u003cbr\u003e Pip.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Hold your noise!\" cried a terrible voice,  as a man started up from among\u003cbr\u003e the graves at the side of the church porch. \"Keep  still, you little devil,\u003cbr\u003e or I'll cut your throat!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA fearful man, all in coarse  grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with\u003cbr\u003e no hat, and with broken shoes, and  with an old rag tied round his head. A\u003cbr\u003e man who had been soaked in water, and smothered  in mud, and lamed by\u003cbr\u003e stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by  briars; who\u003cbr\u003e limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered  in\u003cbr\u003e his head as he seized me by the chin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Oh! Don't cut my throat, sir,\" I pleaded  in terror. \"Pray don't do it,\u003cbr\u003e sir.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Tell us your name!\" said the man. \"Quick!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Pip, sir.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Once more,\" said the man, staring at me. \"Give it mouth!\"","brand":"Everyman's Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302503698661,"sku":"NP9780679405795","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780679405795.jpg?v=1767728461","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/great-expectations-isbn-9780679405795","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}