Great Expectations
Pip, a blacksmith's apprentice on the Kent marshes, is given money by an unknown benefactor and goes to London to become a gentleman. He then spends the rest of the novel discovering that he has misread almost everyone who cared about him.
Dickens originally wrote a different ending and changed it after a friend objected. Both versions are worth comparing. The marsh chapters at the opening are among the best things he ever wrote, and the comedy of the Pocket household is a good counterweight to them.
Public-domain status
First published in 1861. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Charles Dickens died in 1870, so this work has been free to republish there since 1941.
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Keep reading
- Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen, 1813
- Jane Eyre — Charlotte Brontë, 1847
- The Time Machine — H. G. Wells, 1895
- Bleak House — Charles Dickens, 1853
- London — the city behind the books
- Reading lists — 19 ways through the collection
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