Great Expectations (Barnes & Noble Signature Classics)

by Charles Dickens

Overview

Pip is a poor orphan, a boy with “no expectations” being raised by his unkind sister and her husband in a small home on the marshes of Kent. But when Pip meets the bizarre Miss Havisham and her beautiful ward, Estella, he starts to yearn for a life as a gentleman. However, Pip will discover that wealth and honesty do not go hand in hand, and that kindness can be found in the most surprising places. A love story, a mystery, and a sharp critique of upper-class English society, Great Expectations remains one of Dickens’s best-regarded works.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781435171640
Publisher:	Union Square & Co.
Publication date:	03/07/2023
Series:	Signature Classics
Pages:	536
Sales rank:	97,063
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was the second of eight children in a family beset by financial insecurity. A prolific and popular author, even in his day, Dickens is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.

Date of Birth:

February 7, 1812

Date of Death:

June 18, 1870

Place of Birth:

Portsmouth, England

Place of Death:

Gad's Hill, Kent, England

Education:

Home-schooling; attended Dame School at Chatham briefly and Wellington

Read an Excerpt

Chapter I.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Great Expectations"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Charles Dickens.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Young Readers Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Acknowledgements
A Note on the Text
Charles Dickens: A Brief Chronology

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

• Volume I
• Volume II
• Volume III

Explanatory Notes

Appendices: Contemporary Documents

Appendix A. The Composition of the Novel

1. Dickens’s Working Memoranda
2. Dickens’s Letters

Appendix B. Contemporary Responses to the Novel

1. Athenaeum (13 July 1861)
2. Examiner (20 July 1861)
3. Saturday Review (20 July 1861)
4. Atlantic Monday (September 1861)
5. The Times (17 October 1861)
6. British Quarterly Review (January 1862)
7. Rambler (January 1862)
8. Blackwood’s Magazine (May 1862)
9. Temple Bar (September 1862)

Appendix C. On Class and Language

1. Charles Dickens, “Hard Experiences in Boyhood” in John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens (1872-74)
2. Charles Dickens, “Travelling Abroad” The Uncommercial Traveller (1861)
3. Alexis deTocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (1856)
4. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, “Gentlemen” Cornhill Magazine (1862)
5. William Sewell, “Gentlemanly Manners” Sermons to Boys at Radley School (1854-69)
6. John Ruskin, “Of Vulgarity,” Modern Painters (1860)
7. J.H. Newman, “Liberal Knowledge Viewed in Relation to Religion,” The Scope and Nature of University Education (1859)
8. Thomas Carlyle, “Labour,” Past and Present (1843)
9. Samuel Smiles, “Character: The True Gentleman,” Self Help (1859)
10. Mrs. Craik, John Halifax, Gentleman (1856)
11. Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857)
12. Reports on the State of Popular Education in England (1861)

Appendix D. On Crime & Punishment

1. Mrs. Trimmer, The Charity School Spelling Book (1818)
2. Charles Dickens, “Criminal Courts,” Sketches by Boz (1839)
3. Charles Dickens, “A Visit to Newgate,” Sketches by Boz (1839)
4. Report from the Select Committee on Transportation (1838)
5. Henry Savery, Quintus Servinton (1830-31)
6. Marcus Clarke, His Natural Life (1870-72)
7. “The Autobiography of a Convict,” The Voices of Our Exiles (1854)
8. John Binny, “Thieves and Swindlers,” in London Labour and the London Poor (1861)
9. Thomas Carlyle, Model Prisons (1850)
10. Thomas Beard, “A Dialogue Concerning Convicts,” All the Year Round (1861)
11. Charles Dickens, “The Ruffian,” The Uncommercial Traveller (1868)

Maps and Illustrations Showing Settings

Map A: Estuaries of the Thames and Medway
Map B: City of London
Map C: Pip’s London
Illustration A. Smithfield Market
Illustration B. Barnard’s Inn
Illustration C. The River Front at Hammersmith
Illustration D. Covent Garden Market
Illustration E. The Royal Exchange
Illustration F. The Temple Stairs
Illustration G. London Bridge
Illustration H. Billingsgate Market

Select Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Dickens's figures belong to poetry, like figures of Dante or Shakespeare, in that a single phrase, either by them or about them, may be enough to set them wholely before us."  —T.S. Eliot

"All his characters are my personal friends—I am constantly comparing them with living persons, and living persons with them."  —Tolstoy

"Psychologically the latter part of Great Expectations is about the best thing Dickens ever did."  —George Orwell

Editorial Reviews

"It is high time for this Dickens masterpiece to receive the kind of critical and contextual attention that this edition of Great Expectations affords. The editors provide essential information about Dickens's compositional as well as publishing practices, and they further support this background with a sampling of the lively contemporary dialogue about the text in the periodicals of the day. They issues raised by the novel—namely class and language, and crime and punishment—are amply explored by pertinent historical documentation, including highly-charged autobiographical writing by Dickens himself that was not available to his contemporary readership. Moreover, the introduction expertly guides the reader though the application of these materials in a creative and inviting manner. Law and Pinnington have gathered together an impressive array of contemporary documents to promote an informed reading of this classic text...In particular, the maps and illustrations of the novel's various settings allow the non-expert to quickly gain insights which should lead to intriguing arguments about how the novel has worked—for its own time as well as our own. I especially commend the editors for their resourceful choices related to the Victorian conception of what constitutes a true gentleman—itself perhaps the key question that helps to unlock the novel."

Carol Hanbery MacKay University of Texas - Austin

The notes to this edition of Great Expectations are extremely helpful, and the supporting materials are useful, clear, and well-selected. Law and Pinnington have put together an edition that takes into account what the contemporary (and especially, the non-British) reader needs in order to appreciate the novel. All in all, this is an excellent edition.”

Sally Mitchell Temple University

"Expertly narrated by Simon Vance, with a PDF copy of the book included on the first disc." —Library Journal Starred Audio Review

From the Publisher

★ 08/01/2014
Expertly narrated by Simon Vance, with a PDF copy of the book included on the first disc. Great Expectations also won an Audie in 2010 for classic and solo narration—male (Audio Connoisseur, narrated by Charlton Griffin), but that edition will likely be more difficult for libraries to acquire.

Library Journal