Great Expectations

Author: (British) Charles Dickens / Xu Ping
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1812, the second child of John Dickens, a naval clerk, and Elizabeth Barrow. At the age of five, the family moved to Chatham, and by the age of ten, they relocated to Camden Town. As a child, Dickens received some education at a private school, but when he was twelve, his father was imprisoned for debt, and Dickens was sent to work as an apprentice in a shoe polish factory in London, working ten hours a day. Perhaps due to this experience, his works became more focused on the lives of the working class and laborers. However, later, when his father inherited a legacy, the family's financial situation improved, allowing Dickens to return to school. At the age of fifteen, he graduated from Wellington College and then worked at a law firm before transferring to a newspaper office, becoming a journalist who reported on parliamentary debates. Dickens did not receive much formal education and was largely self-taught. Later, he became a parliamentary reporter for the Morning Chronicle, specializing in covering debates in the British House of Commons and frequently traveling around England to report on various elections. He began publishing articles in various publications, which were eventually collected and published as Sketches by Boz, his first collection of essays. However, what truly made him famous was The Pickwick Papers, published in 1836. This book is one of the outstanding works from the later stage of Dickens' writing career and one of his best works. The protagonist, Pip, is a poor orphan from the countryside who once hid an escaped convict. During his youth, he was sent to accompany a noblewoman in the town, where he fell in love with her beautiful and proud adopted daughter, Estella. Miss Havisham, having been abandoned by her husband on her wedding night, despised all men and took Estella as her adopted daughter, raising her as a tool for revenge against men, teaching her to be cold and heartless, using her beauty to torment men. After Pip fell in love with Estella, she mocked and taunted him.