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Great Expectations: Novel-Ties Study Guides

Name: Great Expectations: Novel-Ties Study Guides
Author: Friedland, Joyce
ISBN: 9780881221169

by Friedland, Joyce

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Overview

Great Expectations follows the life of the orphan, Pip. We first meet him as a tiny, terrified child in a village churchyard. Years later, through the help of an anonymous benefactor, Pip will travel to London, full of expectations to become a gentleman. But his life is already inextricably tangled in a mystery that surrounds a beautiful woman, an embittered recluse, and an ambitious lawyer.

Great Expectations is both a finely crafted novel and an acute examination of Victorian society. Filled with unforgettable settings and characters, it achieves greater dramatic richness through Frank Muller's masterful narration. Dickens supplied two endings to this great work. Both are included in the recording.

Young Phillip Pirrip's life is shaped by an act of kindness which raises him from poverty to wealth. One of the greatest works of classic literature, this novel is a timeless tale of love, hope and humanity.

About the Author, Friedland, Joyce

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens is probably the greatest novelist England ever produced. His innate comic genius and shrewd depictions of Victorian life -- along with his memorable characters -- have made him beloved by readers the world over. In Dickens' books live some of the most repugnant villains in literature, as well as some of the most likeable (and unlikely) heroes.

Biography

Born on February 7, 1812, Charles Dickens was the second of eight children in a family burdened with financial troubles. Despite difficult early years, he became the most successful British writer of the Victorian age.

In 1824, young Charles was withdrawn from school and forced to work at a boot-blacking factory when his improvident father, accompanied by his mother and siblings, was sentenced to three months in a debtor's prison. Once they were released, Charles attended a private school for three years. The young man then became a solicitor's clerk, mastered shorthand, and before long was employed as a Parliamentary reporter. When he was in his early twenties, Dickens began to publish stories and sketches of London life in a variety of periodicals.

It was the publication of Pickwick Papers (1836-1837) that catapulted the twenty-five-year-old author to national renown. Dickens wrote with unequaled speed and often worked on several novels at a time, publishing them first in monthly installments and then as books. His early novels Oliver Twist (1837-1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), and A Christmas Carol (1843) solidified his enormous, ongoing popularity. As Dickens matured, his social criticism became increasingly biting, his humor dark, and his view of poverty darker still. David Copperfield (1849-1850), Bleak House (1852-1853), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860-1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865) are the great works of his masterful and prolific period.

In 1858 Dickens's twenty-three-year marriage to Catherine Hogarth dissolved when he fell in love with Ellen Ternan, a young actress. The last years of his life were filled with intense activity: writing, managing amateur theatricals, and undertaking several reading tours that reinforced the public's favorable view of his work but took an enormous toll on his health. Working feverishly to the last, Dickens collapsed and died on June 8, 1870, leaving The Mystery of Edwin Drood uncompleted.

Author biography from the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of David Copperfield.

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Editorials

Saturday Review

Mr. Dickens may be reasonably proud of these volumes.... he has written a story that is new, original, powerful and very entertaining.... It is in his best vein, and although it is too slight, and bears many traces of hasty writing, it is quite worthy to stand beside Martin Chuzzlewit and David Copperfield.
—July 20, 1861

From Barnes & Noble

Considered by many to be Dickens's greatest work, this is a timeless story where vindictiveness and guilt clash with love and gratitude. Enriched by a cast of unforgettable characters, from the orphan Pip to the convict Magwitch and the bitter Miss Haversham.