Great Expectations

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861)

Young orphan Pip encounters an escaped convict, inherits mysterious wealth from an unknown benefactor, and learns that true gentility comes from character, not fortune. Dickens' most personal and psychologically complex novel.

Historical Significance:
Serialized in All the Year Round from December 1860 to August 1861, Great Expectations was written when Dickens was at the height of his powers — and in personal crisis, having separated from his wife Catherine and begun a secret relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan. Pip's shame about his origins and his desperate desire to reinvent himself mirror Dickens' own feelings about his impoverished childhood and his father's imprisonment in the Marshalsea debtors' prison.

Miss Havisham — jilted at the altar, still wearing her wedding dress decades later, her clocks stopped at twenty minutes to nine — is one of the most extraordinary characters in all fiction. The original ending, in which Pip and Estella do not reunite, was changed at the urging of Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Both endings survive and are still debated by scholars.

This public domain classic was originally published in 1861. Free to read and share.