Great Expectations
Dickens's thirteenth novel, a bildungsroman narrated by orphan Pip.
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via Wikipedia: Great Expectations · see source
The story follows the education of a boy nicknamed Pip, presented as a bildungsroman.[1] Wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and good's eventual victory over evil are subjects Dickens addresses in the novel.[2]
Making and release
Dickens began writing Great Expectations after his weekly periodical All the Year Round saw falling sales in September 1860.[3] Harper's Weekly illustrations were provided by John McLenan, though the All the Year Round publication had no illustrations.[4] Dickens revised the ending after Edward Bulwer-Lytton urged him that the original ending was too sad.[5][6] Dickens changed the final sentence in the 1868 edition from "I could see the shadow of no parting from her" to "I saw no shadow of another parting from her".[2]
The novel was very widely praised, with The Times calling it "to be ranked among his happiest" works.[7][8] In correspondence with Forster, Dickens expressed his enthusiasm for the concept, describing it as "a very fine, new and grotesque idea".[9] From 1 December 1860 through August 1861, the story appeared in thirty-six weekly installments within All the Year Round.[1][3] Chapman & Hall brought out the work as a three-volume set in October 1861.[1][10][11][12]
For US publication rights, Harper's Weekly paid £1,000 and ran the serial from 24 November 1860 to 5 August 1861.[2] Dickens's original conclusion had Pip, still unmarried, encountering Estella in London after she had become a widow and then remarried.[5]
What the cited sources add
The 1861 Chapman & Hall first edition was published in three volumes, as shown by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign copies.[10][11][12] The Open Library record for ISBN 9780030779008 lists a 1972 edition published by Holt, Rinehart, Winston.[13] Evan V. Symon's 2013 article notes that Great Expectations tells the story of Pip as he grows in age and maturity.[14] Symon's article indicates that the character does not ultimately achieve his great expectations.[14]
References
- Wikipedia, "Great Expectations" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bleak House alternates between a third-person narrator and a first-person narrator, Esther Summerson, but the former is predominant.; "Was Dickens Really Paid By the Word?", University of California Santa Cruz: The Dickens Project; Dickens, "Great Expectations", Chapman & Hall, 1861; Dickens, "Great Expectations", Chapman & Hall, 1861; Dickens, "Great Expectations", Chapman & Hall, 1861 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Great Expectations" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Great Expectations" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Charles Dickens, Letters, Letter to John Forster, 4 October 1860. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Great Expectations" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Illustrations de McLenan" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Great Expectations" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; Symon, Evan V., "10 Deleted Chapters that Transformed Famous Books", listverse.com, 14 January 2013; ; Charles Dickens, Letters, Letter to John Forster, April 1861. (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Great Expectations" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ian Brinton, "Dickens Bookmarks 12 – Great Expectations"; Charles Dickens, Letters, Letter to John Forster, 25 June 1861. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Great Expectations" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Dallas, "Great Expectations", The Times, April 2025, p. 6 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Great Expectations" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; "The Carlyle Encyclopedia", Associated University Presses, 2004, p. 122; Shaw, George Bernard, "Charles Dickens", Infobase Publishings, 2006, p. 60; Charles Dickens, Letters, Letter to Mary Boyle, 28 December 1860.; Hollington, Michael, "The Grotesque and Tragicomedy in Dickens' Great Expectations", Dickens and the Grotesque, 1984; Ciabattari, "The 100 greatest British novels", BBC Culture, 7 December 2015; "The Big Read", BBC, April 2003 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Great Expectations" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hollington, Michael, "The Grotesque and Tragicomedy in Dickens' Great Expectations", Dickens and the Grotesque, 1984 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Dickens, "Great Expectations", Chapman & Hall, 1861. facts only, no text reused. archive.org
- Dickens, "Great Expectations", Chapman & Hall, 1861. facts only, no text reused. archive.org
- Dickens, "Great Expectations", Chapman & Hall, 1861. facts only, no text reused. archive.org
- Open Library record, ISBN 9780030779008 ("Great Expectations"). CC0 (metadata); book content not read. openlibrary.org
- Symon, Evan V., "10 Deleted Chapters that Transformed Famous Books", listverse.com, 14 January 2013. facts only, no text reused. listverse.com
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Great Expectations (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Great Expectations (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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