Great Expectations

Charles Dickens’ bio

• Portsmouth, England February 7, 1812

• Second of 8 children • When he was 12 they

moved to London, father was imprisoned for debts.

• Charles worked putting labels on bottles in a factory

• Was rejected by his first love Maria Beadnell because of social class differences

• Married Catherine Hogarth in 1836 and had 10 children; he later had a mistress Ellen Ternan who was 27 years younger than him.

• Died of a brain aneurysm in June 1870; buried in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey

Victorian England

• After Queen Victoria who ruled for nearly 60 years• England was become democratic through industrial

changes and political reforms• Industrial Revolution mean England was no longer ag

based but more industrial and mercantile• London was center of the world, but the conditions were

horrible – slums, dirty cities, child labor, low wages for women, orphanages, etc

• EVOLUTION – Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley.

Victorian literature

• Idealized visions of people’s struggles in life. They had a moral that resembled good prevailed eventually and evil was punished.

• It was writing for the people!

• Magazines were popular

GE more specific stuff

• Dicken’s second-to last novel

• First published in 1860 and as a book in 1861

• Incredibly popular with the public

• Ended was revised to be more hopeful

Themes

• Fear and fun

• Loneliness and luck

• Classism and social justice

• Humiliation and honor