Drama · Coming of age
Great Expectations
A poor boy who helped an escaped convict suddenly receives a fortune from a secret benefactor.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
The marshes
Pip is an orphan being brought up “by hand” by his harsh older sister and her gentle husband, Joe Gargery, the village blacksmith, in the marsh country of Kent. One Christmas Eve, in the churchyard where his parents are buried, a terrifying escaped convict seizes him and orders him to bring food and a file. Not long after, Pip is summoned to play at the house of Miss Havisham, a rich, bitter woman who still wears her wedding dress years after she was jilted, among stopped clocks and a rotting cake, and who is raising a beautiful, cold girl called Estella. Then a London lawyer arrives with news: Pip has great expectations. Charles Dickens published it in weekly parts in 1860 and 1861.
Why it works for learners
Pip tells his own story, looking back as an adult, honest about his snobbery and his mistakes. That first-person voice makes feelings and motives clear. The plot is one of Dickens’s tightest, with a strong mystery at its heart and memorable characters at every turn: Joe, Miss Havisham, the lawyer Jaggers and his clerk Wemmick, who is one man at the office and quite another at home. The vocabulary covers class, money, manners, law and ambition, and the London of the early nineteenth century.
Which level to start at
B1 for the story, which survives retelling very well. B2 brings in Dickens’s comedy and Pip’s self-criticism. The C2 edition is the complete novel, shorter than many of Dickens’s books and a good first complete Dickens for advanced learners. Joe’s homely speech is a joy to hear in the narration.
Read next
- Oliver Twist, Dickens’s earlier orphan in London
- Jane Eyre, another orphan telling her own story
- The Great Gatsby, another young man transformed by money and a woman out of reach