Great Expectations tells the story of Pip, a young lad, who grows up without any expectations, but is surprised to hear from a lawyer that he has an unknown benefactor who is sending him to London to learn to become a gentleman. But the great expectations that he has change him, leading him almost to the brink of death, and in the course of events, Pip learns a number of lessons about life, loyalty and true happiness.

The story of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, seems to belong less to the history of the Victorian novel than to folklore, fairy tale, or myth. The sorrows of Nell and her grandfather are offset by Dickens's creation of a dazzling contemporary world inhabited by some of his most brilliantly drawn characters-the eloquent ne'er-do-well Dick Swiveller; the hungry maid known as the "Marchioness"; the mannish lawyer...