Great Expectations

Brought up by his mean sister and her humble blacksmith husband, pip meets many people who change the course of his life from an escaped convict to an eccentric elderly woman for whom time has stopped. Follow pip from childhood to manhood as he discovers that great expectations of wealth don’t always lead to happiness.

About The Author:

Charles Dickens was born in Landport, near Portsmouth, Hampshire, the second child to John Dickens (1786–1851), a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth, and his wife Elizabeth Dickens née Barrow (1789–1863) on February 7, 1812. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent. When he was ten, the family relocated to 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town in London. He was a reformist writer (a writer who wrote about the bad things in order to change society for the better).

Although his early years were an idyllic time, he thought himself then as a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy"[2]. He spent his time outdoors, reading voraciously with a particular fondness for the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. He talked later in life of his extremely poignant memories of childhood and his continuing photographic memory of people and events that helped bring his fiction to life. His family was moderately well-off, and he received some education at the private William Giles' school in Chatham but all that changed when his father, after spending too much money entertaining and retaining his social position, was imprisoned for debt at Marshalsea.

At the age of twelve, Dickens was deemed old enough to work and began working for ten hours a day in a Warren's boot-blacking factory, located near the present Charing Cross railway station. He spent his time pasting labels on the jars of thick polish and earned six shillings a week. With this money, he had to pay for his lodging in Camden Town and help to support his family, most of whom were living with his father, who was incarcerated in the nearby Marshalsea debtors' prison.

After a few months his family was able to leave Marshalsea but their financial situation only improved some time later, partly due to money inherited from his father's family. His mother did not immediately remove Charles from the boot-blacking factory, which was owned by a relation of hers. Dickens never forgave his mother for this, and resentment of his situation and the conditions under which working-class people lived became major themes of his works. As Dickens wrote in David Copperfield, judged to be his most clearly autobiographical novel, "I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!" Eventually he attended the Wellington House Academy in North London.

In May 1827, Dickens began work in the office of Ellis and Blackmore as a law clerk, a junior office position with potential to become a lawyer, a profession for which he later showed his dislike in his many literary works. He later became a court stenographer at the age of 17. In 1830, Dickens met his first love, Maria Beadnell, who is said to be the model for Dora in David Copperfield. Their courtship met with disapproval by her parents and was effectively ended when she was sent to school in Paris. In 1834, Dickens became a journalist, reporting parliamentary debate and travelling Britain by stagecoach to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle. His journalism, in the form of sketches which appeared in periodicals from 1933, formed his first collection of pieces Sketches by Boz which were published in 1836 and led to his first novel, The Pickwick Papers being serialised from March 1836. He continued to contribute to and edit journals for much of his life.