Great Expectations (Readings Classics)

Great Expectations is a bildungsroman and a critique of class differences in Victorian society. Pip, a seven years old orphan, tells his story as he moves through different social classes of nineteenth-century England, from the riff raff to the elite. The novel opens with one of the most famous scenes in British literature: Pip’s encounter with an escaped convict, Able Magwitch, in a cemetery. Later, Pip moves to London where he meets Miss Havisham and her adopted daughter Estella, who has been trained to torment men who desire her. Pip falls in love with this callous heartbreaker from the gentry of London. Originally published in serialized from between 1860 to 1861, Great Expectations has stood the test of time and has been adapted from screen and stage from more than 30 times, Pip, Miss Havisham, Estella, and Abel Magwitch have acquired archetypal and iconic significance as all of them represent various noble and ignoble human traits, It is listed as the 17th best-loves British novel by BBC.