Great Expectations (Broadview Literary Texts)

Originally published in serial form from December 1860 to August 1861, Great Expectations is the ‘autobiography’ of Pip, as he transformed from apprentice village blacksmith to a London gentleman. Unlike many of Dickens’s earlier works, the novel is not so much a protest against social evils as a sustained meditation upon the process of social reform in Victorian England. It is this which gives such importance to the book’s handling of the theme of the gentleman, a theme central both to Dickens’s society and to his own life story.

Graham Law, Professor of English at Waseda University, Japan, has written books and articles on nineteenth century and modern fiction, and edited Dickens’s Hard Times and Wilkie Collins’s The Evil Genius for this series.

Adrian J. Pinnington is Professor of English at Waseda University, Japan and the author of a variety of books and articles on English and Japanese literature.