Great Expectations

One of Dickens's greatest novels, Great Expectations is also one of his most autobiographical stories, as the young protagonist Pip escapes from his troubled childhood experiences to learn for himself the perils of love, the dangers of wealth, and how to sort his friends from his enemies. Just as Dickens never quite recovered from the traumas of the debtor's prison and child labor, so Pip learns that his early life cut more deeply than he realizes, with unavoidable consequences. Through the lives of its unforgettable characters—Pip, Magwitch, Miss Havisham, Estella— Great Expectations charts the course of an England undergoing rapid social and economic change, and tells a tale that is among the foremost classics of the English language.