Great Expectations

Pip comes into money from a source he misidentifies and spends the novel discovering what his new expectations cost — chiefly the blacksmith who raised him. The plot is a machine for taking apart the idea that wealth confers standing, and Dickens is unusually hard on his narrator.

Dickens wrote two endings. The published one, revised on a friend’s advice, is gentler than the one he drafted; most modern editions print both, which makes the book useful for arguing about what an ending is for.

Context: Charles Dickens (1812-1870) serialised Great Expectations weekly in All the Year Round in 1860-61. It is his penultimate completed novel.

Connections

• Charles Dickens — the author.
• A Tale of Two Cities — the earlier novel from the same weekly, also on this list.
• Ambition — and what the book says it costs.
• Literature