Great Expectations
The orphan Pip meets an escaped convict in a churchyard.
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Opening lines
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.
I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister,—Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black…
About the book
Great Expectations is Charles Dickens's thirteenth novel and a bildungsroman told in the first person, depicting the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It opens in a graveyard, where young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch, and unfolds through themes of wealth and poverty, love and rejection. Its vivid characters—Miss Havisham, Estella, Joe Gargery—have made it a favorite of readers and critics alike.
About the author
Charles Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and journalist, regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers, and he went on to write 15 novels and 5 novellas.
Summary prepared with AI from Wikipedia: Great Expectations (CC BY-SA)
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