Considered by many to be Dickens' finest novel, Great Expectations traces the growth of the book's narrator, the orphan Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man with depth of character. From its famous dramatic opening on the bleak Kentish marshes, the story abounds with some of Dickens' most memorable characters. Among them are the kindly blacksmith Joe Gargery, the mysterious convict Abel Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Havisham and her beautiful ward Estella, Pip's good-hearted room-mate Herbert Pocket and the pompous Pumblechook. As Pip unravels the truth behind his own 'great expectations' in his quest to become a gentleman, the mysteries of the past and the convolutions of fate through a series of thrilling adventures serve to steer him towards maturity and his most important discovery of all - the truth about himself.

In the marshylnists of a village churchyard.a tiny orphan boy named Pipis suddenly terrified by a shivering, limping convict on the run. Years later,a supremely arrogant young Pip boards the coach to London, where, by the grace of a mysterious benefactor,he will join the ranks of the idle rich and "become a gentleman." Finally, in the luminous mists of the village at evening, Pip the man meets Estella, his dazzlingly beautiful tormentor, in a ruined garden--and lays to rest all the heartaches and illusions that his "great expectations" have brought upon him.

Dickens's biographer Edgar H. Johnson has said that--except for the author's last-minute tampering with his original ending--Great Expectations is "the most perfectly constructed and perfectly written of all Dickens's works."

In John Irving's Introduction to this edition, the novelist takes the view that Dickens's revised ending is "far more the mirror of the quality of trust in the novel as a whole." Both versions of the ending are printed here.

Introduction by John Irving

Great Expectations

The Origir al Ending of Great Expectations

Bibliography