1. Charles Dickens and his Great Expectations
Background Notes

2. Charles Dickens Born on February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, England
Died June 9, 1870
buried in Westminster Abbey

3. Early life’s struggles
Charles Dickens’ father, John Dickens was a naval clerk who dreamed of striking it rich
Dickens’ mother, Elizabeth Barrow, aspired to be a teacher and school director
Despite his parents best efforts, they remained poor

4. The family moved to Kent when Dickens was 4 and he and his siblings ran around the countryside and explored the old Rochester castle
When Dickens was 10, the family moved to a poor neighborhood in London
By this time John Dickens had acquired extensive debt and was imprisoned – Charles was 12 years old

5. Following his father’s imprisonment, Charles Dickens was forced to leave school to work at a boot-blacking factory alongside the River Thames.
Dickens was permitted to
go back to school when his
father received a family inheritance and
used it to pay off his debts.
But when Dickens was 15, he had to drop out of school and work as an office boy to contribute to his family’s income.

6. Early adult and marriage
Just a few years later, he was reporting for two major London newspapers.
At the age of 21, he began submitting story “sketches” to various magazines and newspapers under the pseudonym “Boz.”
In 1836 at the age of 26, he married Catherine Hogarth whom he met at work at The Morning Chronicle.

7. In 1837, the first of 10 children were born.
Dickens grew unhappy with Catherine and
his marriage.  He resented the fact that he
had so many children to support. 
(Somehow he saw this as Catherine's fault and he feared he would follow in his father’s financial owes.)  And he did not approve of  Catherine's lack of energy. 
He began to indicate that she was not nor had ever been his intellectual equal.
They were legally separated in 1858

8. Days later Dickens published a notice in the London Times and Household Words that tried to explain the separation to the public.
While an announcement of this sort seems extreme Dickens was motivated to do so by some of the rumors circulating about the breakup.  There was some gossip about an actress and some stories even suggested that Dickens was having an affair with his sister-in-law, Georgina. 
In the notice he stated, "Some domestic trouble of mine, of long-standing, on which I will make no further remark than that it claims to be respected, as being of a sacredly private nature, has lately been brought to an arrangement, which involves no anger or ill-will of any kind, and the whole origin, progress, and surrounding circumstances of which have been, throughout, within the knowledge of my children.  It is amicably composed, and its details have now to be forgotten by those concerned in it."

9. His Writing
In the same year that Sketches by Boz was released, Dickens started publishing The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.
The stories or “sketches” were published in monthly installments.
People couldn’t afford to buy a large novel, but they could afford to buy a monthly magazine and look forward to the continuation of Dickens’ stories.
Around this time, Dickens had also become publisher of a magazine called Bentley’s Miscellany.

10. It is here that he starts publishing his first novel, Oliver Twist (The story was inspired by how Dickens felt as an impoverished child)
Dedicated readers of Oliver Twist eagerly anticipated the next monthly installment.
This monthly installment publishing is one of the reasons Dickens’ novels tend to be so long with many chapters.
During his first U.S. lecture tour in 1842, Dickens designated himself as what many have deemed the first modern celebrity.

11. During these U.S. tours he earned no less than $95,000, which, in the Victoria Era, amounted to approximately $1.5 million in current U.S. dollars.
During the 1850s, Dickens suffered two devastating losses: the deaths of his daughter and father and the separation from his wife Catherine
Consequently, his novels began to express his darkened worldview

12. After his “dark novel” period, Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities and began publishing the periodical All The Year Round
His next novel, Great Expectations ( ), focuses on the protagonist’s lifelong journey of moral development. 
It is widely considered his greatest literary accomplishment.

13. In the end
In 1865, Dickens was in a train accident and never fully recovered. 
Despite his fragile condition, he continued to tour until 1870.
On June 9, 1870 Dickens suffered a stroke and died in his Gad’s Hill home in Kent
He was 58 years old.

14. He was buried in Poet’s Corner in
Westminster Abbey
His final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was left unfinished.

15. Great Expectations Dickens’ 13th novel
I deliberated with an aching heart whether I
would not get down when we changed horses and
walk back, and have another evening at home,
and a better parting. We changed, and I had not
made up my mind We changed again, and
yet again, and it was now too late and too far to
go back, and I went on. And the mists had all
solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread
before me.
—Pip (Chapter 19)
These words reveal the thoughts of one of Dickens’s most famous characters as he starts a new life with great expectations as well as doubts

16. It traces the life and experiences of Philip Pirrip, or Pip, as he comes of age in the early- to mid-nineteenth century
Pip tells his own story as an adult looking back on his younger years. When the novel begins, Pip is a poor orphan who seems destined to become a blacksmith like his brother-in-law and live out his life in the marsh area of Kent, England.
An unexpected chain of events, however, thrusts him into a completely different world and way of life.

17. Over time, Pip’s new life becomes much more complicated than he imagined it would be, and he is forced to reevaluate his values and the values of the society in which he finds himself
In Great Expectations, as in his other novels, Dickens dramatizes the moral struggles and faults of the Victorian age.
Dickens implies that a society fascinated by wealth
and power is too far removed from basic moral values.

18. The story begins in the early 1800s, in the marsh area of Kent, England. (an area Dickens is familiar with from his childhood)
Later in the novel the scene shifts to busy, industrial London.
The novel shifts back and forth between these two locations as events unfold.
As you read the novel, think about the values that the people in each setting hold.

19. Social Satire
Satire is literature that uses humor or sarcasm to ridicule human vices or follies.
Dickens was interested in social
reform, and passages of the novel
often reflect his feelings toward
people and institutions in
nineteenth-century English society.
Dickens’s satire emerges in his colorful descriptions of characters, places, and events. Sometimes even the names of Dickens’s characters are satirical.

20. Setting: Kent and London, England Early 1800s
Kent County
London

21. Images One of Dickens’ homes in London
Down the street from his home is door number 11 – this is the original doorknocker that inspired the haunted doorknocker in A Christmas Carol

22. London’s Piccadilly Circus Square – 1896
2013

23. Dickens’ London office and apartment 1800s
2013

24. One of the plaques in Shakespeare’s home reads…