Great Expectations

Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens, edited in 1861. It depicts the growth and personal development of an orphan named Pip. Great Expectations is a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age novel. It is set among the marshes of Kent and in London in the early-to-mid 1800s. On Christmas Eve, around 1812, Pip, an orphan who is approximately six years old, encounters an escaped convict in the village churchyard while visiting the graves of his mother and father, as well as those of his siblings. The convict scares Pip into stealing food for him, and a file to grind away his shackles, from the home he shares with his abusive older sister and her kind, passive husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith. The next day, soldiers recapture the convict, and another, while they are engaged in a fight; the two are returned to the prison ships whence they escaped.