Charles Dickens

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

New York

New York Public Library Collector's Edition

Great Expectations is among the most masterful of Charles Dickens's novels. Displaying extraordinary tragicomic range, Dickens blends an atmosphere of brooding violence and guilt with sharp and often disturbing humor to create a drama charged with the thrilling intensity of a detective story and the poignancy of a spiritual autobiography. Much of the novel's power comes from Dickens's unequaled skill at making even the most wildly eccentric of characters seem utterly real, so that the players in this novel quickly come to feel as vivid and close to the reader as old friends. From the orphan Pip's first terrifying encounter with the convict Magwitch to his strange relationship with Miss Havisham and her beautiful, heartless ward, Estella; from the buffoonery of very bad Shakespearean acting to the almost unbearably sad realization of blighted hopes, Great Expectations is a magnetic and very moving story that engages the heart as well as the mind. In this edition of the novel, the author and his world are brought vibrantly to life with rare materials drawn from the collections of The New York Public Library, including original illustrations by five distinguished nineteenth-century artists; dashing portraits of Dickens by the inimitable George Cruikshank; relics from Gad's Hill Place, the novelist's beloved home; and even some revelatory pages from Dickens's own private pocket diary, which he lost during his 1867-68 American reading tour.

Great Expectations

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Charles Dickens; McDougal-Littell Publishing Staff (Prepared for Publication by)

Charles. Dickens

Library stamp on inside cover - cover has some wear due to usage 

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Texas

In the marshy mists of a village churchyard, a tiny orphan boy named Pip is suddenly terrified by a shivering, limping convict on the run. Years later, a supremely arrogant young Pip boards the coach to London where, by the grace of a mysterious benefactor, he will join the ranks of the idle rich and "become a gentleman." Finally, in the luminous mists of the village at evening, Pip the man meets Estella, his dazzingly beautiful tormentor, in a ruined garden--and lays to rest all the heartaches and illusions that his "great expectations" have brought upon him. Dickens's biographer, Edgar H. Johnson, has said that--except for the author's last-minute tampering with his original ending--Great Expectations is "the most perfectly constructed and perfectly written of all Dickens's works." In John Irving's Introduction to this edition, the novelist takes the view that Dickens's revised ending is "far more that mirror of the quality of trust in the novel as a whole." Both versions of the ending are printed here.

And Related Readings

After harsh early years, Pip, an orphan growing up in Victorian England, is given the means to become a gentleman by an unknown benefactor and learns that outward appearances can be deceiving.

Category - Fiction / Classics

Format - Hardcover

Condition - Good

Listed - 10 days ago

Ships From - New York

Est. Publication Date - Aug 1997

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Great Expectations: New York Public Library Collector's Edition

ISBN: 9780385487214

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Category - Fiction / Classics

Format - Hardcover

Condition - Good

Listed - 10 days ago

Ships From - New York

Est. Publication Date - Aug 1997

Additional Information

Great Expectations: New York Public Library Collector's Edition

ISBN: 9780385487214

Publisher Description

Tags

Great Expectations

By:

$5.00

Meet the seller

Discover more

Great Expectations

By: Charles Dickens; McDougal-Littell Publishing Staff (Prepared for Publication by)

Pango Buyer Protection

More from this seller

Additional titles by Charles Dickens; McDougal-Littell Publishing Staff (Prepared for Publication by)

'Great Expectations' readers also enjoyed:

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