Hi, Help Is Needed!!!!!!!!!

[LATZ]

Hi
Does Any1 Know The History Behind Great Expectation?
Need 2 Know If Any1 Does
Thnx

[Anthony Furze]

I ll be looking into this today and reply a bit later if no one else steps in to help. AF

[Charles Darnay]

Kind of depends on what you mean by history....

A lot of Dicken's works are based on his life (the debter's prison in Pickwick Papers is modelled after the one his father was locked up in) (Oliver Twist is baded on his childhood on the streets), however, i do not beleive that Great Expectations contained much personal experience.

The context is, as all of Dickens's novels, Industrail London. I believe that Great Expectations was simply meant to show the reality behind the rural vs urban class distinctions.

But perhaps there is more to it that i do not know of

[Anthony Furze]

Hello there again.
As Charles quite rightly says,it depends on what you mean by history...
Great Expectations was highly auto biographical. The marshes were where D himslf grew up and the London locations were all ones he knew from his extensive walks through the Capital.
Even the timings of the steamer ships at the end of the novel were exactly calculated by him to be true to life.
The characters are obviously fictional,as are many of the incidents-but the locations are all based on real places. Alot of Pips enmotional crises are Dickens' own as a boy.
Try the Norton Critical Edition of the novel for good background stuff.