Barnes & Noble Classics Great Expectations ISBN=9781593081621pdf/txt下载_在线阅读全文

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　　Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, is part of the Barnes Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions ataffordable prices to the student and the general reader, includingnew scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully craftedextras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes Noble Classics:
　　New introductions commissioned from today's top writers andscholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporaryhistorical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes andendnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems,books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired bythe work Comments by other famous authors Study questions tochallenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographiesfor further reading Indices Glossaries, when appropriateAlleditions are beautifully designed and are printed to superiorspecifications; some include illustrations of historical interest.Barnes Noble Classics pulls together a constellation ofinfluences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich eachreader's understanding of these enduring works.

Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, is part of the Barnes
& Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at
affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including
new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted
extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes &
Noble Classics: 
　　New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and
scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary
historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and
endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems,
books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by
the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to
challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies
for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll
editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior
specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest.
Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of
influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each
reader's understanding of these enduring works. 
　　Great Expectations, described by G. K. Chesterton as a “study in
human weakness and the slow human surrender,” may be called Charles
Dickens’s finest moment in a remarkably illustrious literary
career. 
　　In an overgrown churchyard, a grizzled convict springs upon an
orphan named Pip. The convict terrifies the young boy and threatens
to kill him unless Pip helps further his escape. Later, Pip finds
himself in the ruined garden where he meets the bitter and crazy
Miss Havisham and her foster child Estella, with whom he
immediately falls in love. After a secret benefactor gives him a
fortune, Pip moves to London, where he cultivates great
expectations for a life which would allow him to discard his
impoverished beginnings and socialize with the idle upper class. As
Pip struggles to become a gentleman and is tormented endlessly by
the beautiful Estella, he slowly learns the truth about himself and
his illusions. 
　　Written in the last decade of his life, Great Expectations
reveals Dickens’s dark attitudes toward Victorian society, its
inherent class structure, and its materialism. Yet this novel
persists as one of Dickens’s most popular. Richly comic and
immensely readable, Great Expectations overspills with vividly
drawn characters, moral maelstroms, and the sorrow and pity of
love. 
　　Radhika Jones is a doctoral candidate in English and comparative
literature at Columbia University and the managing editor of Grand
Street magazine.

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目　　录

The World of Charles Dickens and Great Expectations
Introduction by Radhika Jones
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
The Original Ending to Great Expectations
Endnotes
Inspired by Great Expectations
Comments and Questions
For Further Reading

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　　From Radhika Jones's Introduction to Great Expectations
　　Whatever expectations Charles Dickens had for his thirteenthnovel, he probably did not anticipate that it would someday come toexemplify the Victorian novel itself. But to the countlesscontemporary readers who follow the adventures of young Pip, theconvict he fears, the girl he loves, and the strange old woman hethinks will make his fortune, Great Expectations is in many waysthe quintessential nineteenth-century story: part mystery, partbildungsroman, or novel of education, in which our hero, risingabove his modest beginnings, moves to London, prospers, andeventually (he hopes) gets the girl. Pip's course, however, doesnot run so smoothly, and it is the variations Dickens plays on thistheme that prompt us to read Great Expectations both with andagainst the grain of the Victorian novel, for at times it is lessan emblem of tradition than a marker of change in both the Englishsociety it depicts and the English novel it represents. There aresurprises at work in Great Expectations for both its characters andits readers, who bring to it their own expectations of what a novelshould be and do.

From Radhika Jones's Introduction to Great Expectations 
　　Whatever expectations Charles Dickens had for his thirteenth
novel, he probably did not anticipate that it would someday come to
exemplify the Victorian novel itself. But to the countless
contemporary readers who follow the adventures of young Pip, the
convict he fears, the girl he loves, and the strange old woman he
thinks will make his fortune, Great Expectations is in many ways
the quintessential nineteenth-century story: part mystery, part
bildungsroman, or novel of education, in which our hero, rising
above his modest beginnings, moves to London, prospers, and
eventually (he hopes) gets the girl. Pip's course, however, does
not run so smoothly, and it is the variations Dickens plays on this
theme that prompt us to read Great Expectations both with and
against the grain of the Victorian novel, for at times it is less
an emblem of tradition than a marker of change in both the English
society it depicts and the English novel it represents. There are
surprises at work in Great Expectations for both its characters and
its readers, who bring to it their own expectations of what a novel
should be and do. 
　　A caricature of Dickens displayed in bookstores when the first
sections of Great Expectations appeared (in serialized form, as was
common for novels in the Victorian era) shows the author at his
desk, pen in hand, hair standing on end, exuding genius. The
caption reads, "Charles Dickens, from whom we have Great
Expectations." Though the pun is obvious, it is worth recalling for
the simple reason that it sounds oddly forward-looking, like
something one would say of a promising young writer at the
beginning of his career. When Dickens began Great Expectations, at
age forty-eight, he already had a dozen novels to his name, as well
as countless short stories; he was also an accomplished and
experienced editor, a powerful publisher, and a prolific generator
of nonfiction-articles, editorials, sketches, and so on. Thanks to
both his own prodigious skills and the remarkable rise in literacy
rates in nineteenth-century England and America-a fortuitous
combination of talented writer and eager new readership-Dickens was
one of the first bona-fide mass-market writers in history, a
best-selling author and, as novelist Jane Smiley observes in a
recent biography, "maybe the first true celebrity in the modern
sense." If the world had Great Expectations of Dickens, those
expectations could be only that he would continue to deliver a
product of which he himself was the most significant producer:
compelling stories that appeared in monthly or weekly installments
to entertain and inform. And so the caricature's caption reminds us
of Dickens's intimate relationship to his readership; the novels he
produced went from his pen to their hands with a kind of immediacy
that no longer exists in the world of fiction outside of
journalism. With every installment of his new novel, Dickens would
fulfill expectations, even as he stoked the public's appetite for
more. 
　　The writing of Great Expectations coincided roughly with a new
phase in Dickens's life and career. He had recently left his wife,
Catherine, mother of his ten children, and had embarked on a very
private affair with a young actress, Ellen Ternan. He had also
discontinued his immensely popular weekly journal Household Words,
of which he was editor and part-owner, after his copublishers took
issue with his decision to print a personal statement, intended to
refute rumors about his dissolving marriage, on the front page. Now
Dickens was editor of a replacement journal, All the Year Round, in
which his historical novel A Tale of Two Cities debuted. Shortly
after finishing that work, he began contributing chapters of Great
Expectations to boost the circulation, which was sagging due to a
lackluster serial by Charles Lever that was then running. (As
Dickens's friend and biographer John Forster wryly notes: "A tale,
which at the time was appearing in his serial, had disappointed
expectation.") Dickens called a staff meeting to discuss options,
but he had already decided on a course of action: It was time for
him to "strike in." His faith in his selling power did not go
unrewarded; circulation of the weekly rebounded and remained
healthy for the rest of Dickens's career. But his decision had an
impact on the story he was envisioning before it even reached the
page. According to Forster, Dickens was planning to compose his new
novel-for which he had already conceived the pivotal relationship,
between a young boy and a convict-in monthly serial form,
comprising twenty numbers, which would have made it a much longer
work on the scale of such previous hits as Dombey and Son and
Little Dorrit. Publishing it in his weekly journal would require
Dickens to reconfigure his idea into a shorter book, along the
lines of its predecessor, A Tale of Two Cities. The result is a
novel more pruned in its plots, more limited in its cast of
characters than others of Dickens's great works. It was a
"sacrifice," Dickens told Forster, "really and truly made for
myself"-a compromise between Dickens the publisher and Dickens the
writer. Thus was Great Expectations born: out of disappointed
expectation, transformed from its creator's original expectation.
The meanings inscribed in its title had already begun to
multiply.

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