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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Great Expectations
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(1861)
Novel by *Dickens, serialized 1860–1 in All the Year Round. In an intensely dramatic opening scene a young boy, Pip (Philip Pirrip), is accosted in a churchyard by Abel Magwitch, an escaped convict with irons on his legs. Pip agrees to bring him a file and some food. The great expectations are those of Pip himself, who later begins to receive money from a mysterious source, enough to take him to London and to give him the life of a gentleman. He assumes the money comes from a wealthy recluse, Miss Havisham, whose ward, Estella, does not fully return Pip's love for her. But it is sent by Magwitch, who has made a fortune in Australia.
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Both Pip and Estella (Magwitch's daughter, it turns out) reveal their worst selves in rich London life; Pip now scorns Joe Gargery, the good-hearted blacksmith who has brought him up, and Estella marries an upper-class oaf, Bentley Drummle, who mistreats her but dies in an accident. Adversity improves them both. Pip is penniless after the supply of money from Magwitch ends, but he then makes a career abroad. The two meet again in the last scene with an implicit promise, to the reader, that they will marry. Dickens' more bleak original ending, which he changed on a friend's advice, left Pip facing the rest of his life alone.
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