Great Expectations

Abstract

Composition Like Hard Times, Great Expectations was written at the prompting of urgent external circumstances. As Robert Patten says, ‘though there are some indications that Dickens had been thinking about the theme of Great Expectations for a while, both the timing and the form of the story were once again determined by economic considerations’. Dickens had launched his weekly periodical All the Year Round in April 1859 with A Tale of Two Cities as the lead-story, and the Tale was followed by Wilkie Collins’ immensely popular The Woman in White. As the latter drew towards a close in August 1860 a new serial was introduced — Charles Lever’s A Day’s Ride. This turned out to be, as Patten says, ‘deadly dull’, and ‘Dickens feared, then saw confirmed, a drop in sales’. Just as Hard Times had been written and published in response to the falling sales of Household Words, Dickens now conceived the notion of coming to the rescue of All the Year Round by writing a new novel himself. His letters to Forster in October 1860 communicate and justify his decision: It was perfectly clear that the one thing to be done was, for me to strike in. I have therefore decided to begin a story, the length of the Tale of Two Cities, on the First of December … by dashing in now, I come in when most wanted. KeywordsHard TimePrivate TutorGreat ExpectationModern Language AssociationWeekly SerialThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.