Literature

Great ExpectationsProducts Relating to 'Great Expectations'

Great Expectations

Claimed to be one of Charles Dickens greatest works. It began life in a magazine serialisation as did most of Dickens popular works ,before becoming a novel and later plays, tv series and films .

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth on February 7, 1812

His father John was a clerk in the Navy Pay office at Portsmouth Naval Dockyard. His Father was not good with money and consequently the Dickens family moved often throughout his childhood, living variously in Chatham, Kent and Camden Town, London.

In 1824, when Dickens was twelve, Charles went to work at Warren's Blacking (a shoe-polish factory) . He needed to help provide additional funds for the penurious family , and child labour was quite normal at this time . This event, along with the family's periodic evictions due to non-payment of rent and his father's eventual imprisonment for debt at Marshalsea Prison, were pivotal events in the young boy's life and were called upon in his later writing.

Dickens often used the poor and their mistreatment and ' poor boy made good ' as themes within his work.

As with most Of Dickens's works , Great Expectations was serialized in Dickens's own magazine " All Year Round ". Published between December 1st , 1860 and August 3rd , 1861 .

It was the Victorians equivalent of our soap operas or radio serialisations. , Great Expectations was an enormous success.

Dickens was by this time already a well established and popular writer. Great Expectations was selling up to 100,000 copies a week during the mid point of its run .

Great Expectations

It's the story of an orphan boy 'Pip 'and his journey through life.The "great expectations" of the title are those of Pip, who receives a large fortune from an anonymous benefactor. This causes him to leave his village and the people who are his friends and family, in order to "become a gentleman". In doing so he turns his back on trustworthy simple friends and discovers a web of deceit .So we have the ' poor boy made good ' and the way an individual can be deceived both by himself and others .

Great Expectations deals with the darkest sides of human nature, crime ,greed, power, revenge , betrayal. The characters are strong and the themes of wrongdoing and retribution are cleverly interwoven into the story, which is cleverly constructed and deals with the eternal themes of justice and morality.

Article Published: Wednesday 20th December 2006