Name: Great Expectations
Price: 1132.00 TWD
Availability: InStock
Author: Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9781544083841

Type

Physical Book

Author

Charles Dickens

Publisher

Createspace

Language

English

Pages

484

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm

Weight

0.64 kg.

ISBN13

9781544083841

Synopsis "Great Expectations"

My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip. I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister, -Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine, -who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle, -I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence. Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip. "Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!" A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin. "Oh! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror.

Charles Dickens

(Author)

View Author's Page

Charles Dickens (February 7, 1812 - June 9, 1870) was born in Portsmouth and was the eldest son of a Royal Navy clerk. At twelve, his father's imprisonment for debt forced him to work in a blacking factory. His education was sporadic: he taught himself shorthand, worked as a clerk in a law office, and eventually became a parliamentary correspondent for the Morning Chronicle.

Coming from a humble family, "good old Charles" did not receive formal education until he was nine, and was heavily criticized by the critics of the time for being too self-taught. His life took an unexpected turn with his father's imprisonment for debts, moving his family to live with him in jail, allowed at that time by British laws. At the age of 12, he was already considered fit to start working in a dye factory. Although his family's situation had improved, his mother insisted he keep working there, inspiring him to write one of his masterpieces, David Copperfield.

His articles, later collected in Scenes from London Life by "Boz" (1836-1837), were very successful, and with the appearance in 1837 of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Dickens became a true publishing phenomenon. Novels such as Oliver Twist (1837-1839), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), and Barnaby Rudge (1841) gained enormous popularity, as did some travel chronicles, such as Pictures from Italy (1846). With Dombey and Son (1846-1848) he began his mature period, of which good examples are David Copperfield (1849-1850), his first novel in the first person and his favorite, in which he developed some autobiographical episodes; Bleak House (1852-1853); Little Dorrit (1855-1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860-1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865). He died at Gad's Hill, his country house in Higham, in the county of Kent.

See less