Great Expectations

Great Expectations is among the most masterful of Charles Dickens's novels. Displaying extraordinary tragicomic range, Dickens blends an atmosphere of brooding violence and guilt with sharp and often disturbing humor to create a drama charged with the thrilling intensity of a detective story and the poignancy of a spiritual autobiography. Much of the novel's power comes from Dickens's unequaled skill at making even the most wildly eccentric of characters seem utterly real, so that the players in this novel quickly come to feel as vivid and close to the reader as old friends. From the orphan Pip's first terrifying encounter with the convict Magwitch to his strange relationship with Miss Havisham and her beautiful, heartless ward, Estella; from the buffoonery of very bad Shakespearean acting to the almost unbearably sad realization of blighted hopes, Great Expectations is a magnetic and very moving story that engages the heart as well as the mind. In this edition of the novel, the author and his world are brought vibrantly to life with rare materials drawn from the collections of The New York Public Library, including original illustrations by five distinguished nineteenth-century artists; dashing portraits of Dickens by the inimitable George Cruikshank; relics from Gad's Hill Place, the novelist's beloved home; and even some revelatory pages from Dickens's own private pocket diary, which he lost during his 1867-68 American reading tour.