Great Expectations Synopsis
HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.'My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.'An orphan destined for a life of misery and poverty, Pip does not have much in the way of expectations. Only when he begins to visit a rich old woman, Miss Havisham, does he begin to hope for better. When Pip discovers that he has inherited a large sum of money on the condition that he move to London to live the life of a gentleman, Pip takes his chance to leave behind the world he knows and embark upon a new adventure.An illuminating tale of intrigue, fortune and unattainable love, Great Expectations has a cast of memorable characters, and is one of Dickens' most enduring and popular novels.
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About Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Hampshire, during the new industrial age, which gave birth to theories of Karl Marx. Dickens's father was a clerk in the navy pay office. He was well paid but often ended in financial troubles. In 1814 Dickens moved to London, and then to Chatham, where he received some education. The schoolmaster William Giles gave special attention to Dickens, who made rapid progress. In 1824, at the age of 12, Dickens was sent to work for some months at a blacking factory, Hungerford Market, London, while his father John was in Marshalea debtor's prison. "My father and mother were quite satisfied," Dickens later recalled bitterly. "They could hardly have been more so, if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge." Later this period found its way to the novel LITTLE DORRITT (1855-57). John Dickens paid his £40 debt with the money he inherited from his mother; she died at the age of seventy-nine when he was still in prison.
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