Great Expectations Charles Dickens Lovereading - GCSE English - AQA Exam Board More books from this list Book 8 of 45. View the next book in this list View the next book in this list This title is in stock Price £5.24 RRP £6.99  Saving £1.75 (%25)   Download Extract    Buy This Book

The Lovereading comment:

October 2011 Guest Editor Roddy Doyle: A small boy called Pip is in a graveyard just as it’s getting dark. He’s looking at the grave where his parents and five brothers are buried. An escaped convict jumps out from behind a grave and grabs him. It’s the best start to a novel ever, and the rest of the book lives up to its start. I’ve always loved Dickens. I read him when I was 9, and I’m reading him today.

Reviews

1.   Pride and Prejudice  Jane Austen 
2.   The Lord of the Rings  JRR Tolkien 
3.   Jane Eyre   Charlotte Brontë
4.   Harry Potter  JK Rowling 
5.   To Kill a Mockingbird  Harper Lee 
6.   The Bible  
7.   Wuthering Heights  Emily Brontë 
8.   Nineteen Eighty-Four  George Orwell 
9.   His Dark Materials  Philip Pullman
10.  Great Expectations  Charles Dickens 

About The Author

Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Hampshire, during the new industrial age, which gave birth to theories of Karl Marx. Dickens's father was a clerk in the navy pay office. He was well paid but often ended in financial troubles. In 1814 Dickens moved to London, and then to Chatham, where he received some education. The schoolmaster William Giles gave special attention to Dickens, who made rapid progress. In 1824, at the age of 12, Dickens was sent to work for some months at a blacking factory, Hungerford Market, London, while his father John was in Marshalsea debtor's prison.

"My father and mother were quite satisfied," Dickens later recalled bitterly. "They could hardly have been more so, if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge."

Later this period found its way to the novel Little Dorrit (1855-57). John Dickens paid his £40 debt with the money he inherited from his mother; she died at the age of seventy-nine when he was still in prison.