Young Pip, an orphan boy, apprenticed to the village blacksmith, yearns to be a gentleman. Suddenly a mysterious person wills him a fortune and he leaves his village to be educated as a rich gentleman. Pip longs to marry Estella, beautiful ward of the eccentric Miss Havisham. But Pip's new life is shattered by the re-appearance of Magwitch, a convict who once forced him to steal. Will Magwitch's demands spell the end of Pip's "great expectations?"...

A classic tale of an orphan growing up in the 1800's of England. Intimately rooted in the author's own biography and written as a first-person narrative, "David Copperfield" charts a young man's progress through a difficult childhood in Victorian England to ultimate success as a novelist, finding true love along the way. Jeremy Tambling's provocative Introduction reveals subtle themes relevant today in Dickens' favorite work.

Two of Dicken's novels are republished. The first follows a group from the tranquil roads of London to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror. The second follows the life of the orphaned Pip from the wild Kent marshes through a series of events as he abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman.