Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

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Résumé :
A reissue of the three-volume first book edition (1861) of one of Dickens' greatest novels.

Biographie:
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 in Portsmouth, England, and experienced a tumultuous childhood marked by his father's imprisonment for debt. This forced Dickens to leave school at a young age to work in a boot-blacking factory, an experience that deeply influenced his later writings. Despite these hardships, Dickens rose to become one of the most famous and influential novelists of the Victorian era.Dickens' literary career took off with the serialization of The Pickwick Papers in 1836, which was followed by a string of successful novels, including Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. His works were known for their vivid characters, social commentary, and the serialized format that kept readers eagerly awaiting each new installment. Dickens used his writing to expose the harsh realities of industrial society, particularly the struggles of the poor and the injustices they faced.Throughout his life, Dickens was not only a prolific writer but also an advocate for social reform. He campaigned for children's rights, education, and the plight of the working class, using his influence to raise awareness and inspire change. His legacy endures in the timeless appeal of his novels and the term Dickensian, which describes both his distinctive style and the societal conditions he depicted....

Sommaire:
The novels of Charles Dickens (1812-70), with their inimitable energy and their comic, tragic and grotesque characters, are still widely read, and reworked for film and television. The first book edition of Great Expectations was published in three volumes in 1861. It is now reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection simultaneously with the serialised version, published in Dickens' periodical All the Year Round in 1860-1, and a volume of newly photographed actual-size colour images of the entire original manuscript. Dickens himself had the manuscript bound and presented to his friend Chauncy Hare Townshend, with whom he shared an interest in mesmerism and the occult, and in 1868 Townshend bequeathed his library (including the manuscript) to the Wisbech and Fenland Museum. Dickens scholars and enthusiasts will now be able easily to study this three-volume book edition alongside the serial and the work-in-progress, with all its deletions and revisions....