Introduction

The orphan Pip is brought up by his hot-tempered sister and her kindly husband Joe, the blacksmith. One cold evening when he is seven, a convict seizes him in the churchyard on the marshes and forces him to steal food and a file from home. Later he is taken to the house of the rich and strange Miss Havisham to play cards with her. Jilted on her wedding day, she stopped every clock in the house and still wears her yellowed wedding dress, sitting beside the dust-covered wedding cake. Pip falls in love with her beautiful, cold adopted daughter Estella and begins to feel ashamed of his origins. One day a lawyer tells him that an anonymous benefactor will make him heir to a large fortune and send him to London to be educated as a gentleman. Pip believes his benefactor is Miss Havisham, but the truth is something he never expected... Told in the first person, this novel of growing up is among Dickens's most accomplished works.