Great Expectations.

DICKENS, Charles.

Item Number: 129558

London: Oxford University Press, 1965.

Finely bound example of the novel Dickens’ popular Victorian bildungsroman. Octavo, bound in full crushed red morocco by Sangorski and Sutcliffe with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, double gilt ruling and fleuron cornerpieces to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. In fine condition.

Dickens' penultimate novel, Great Expectations, was written in "the afternoon of [his] life and fame" (G.K. Chesterton). The novel contains some of Dickens' most memorable scenes, including its opening, set in a graveyard, when the young orphan Pip is accosted by escaped convict Abel Magwitch. Upon its release, the novel received near universal acclaim. Although Dickens' contemporary Thomas Carlyle referred to it disparagingly as "that Pip nonsense," he nevertheless reacted to each fresh instalment with "roars of laughter." Later, George Bernard Shaw praised the novel, as "all of one piece and consistently truthful." During the serial publication, Dickens was pleased with public response to Great Expectations and its sales; when the plot first formed in his mind, he called it "a very fine, new and grotesque idea."