The Companion to Great Expectations: 7 (The Dickens Companions) - Hardcover

.".. If in any doubt, consult 'The Companion to "Great Expectations"' by David Paroissien, an extraordinary behind-the-scenes tour of Dickens's novel ..."--Times Literary Supplement

"Thorough, well-considered, clear, incisive and complete, the Companion to 'Great Expectations' gives readers everything needed for its full appreciation. It is a comprehensive and enjoyable work of reference and scholarhip about Dickens as well as the novel, precisely mapped and illustrated. It takes the student through the novel's origins, completion, dense allusions, and what Graham Greene calls its 'secret prose'. We are shown it directly: written about an earlier period and addressed to its time."--K.J Fielding

"Paroissien's passion for finding the illuminating detail and for getting the detail right is evident. ... readers will find Paroissien's companionship rich in research and of breath-taking fullness."--Patrick MacCarthy, Dickens list-serv (online)

"The Dickens Companions are clearly indispensible to the scholar."--Modern Language Review (from review of 'The Companion to A Tale of Two Cities')

"The Companion to Great Expectations will remain a landmark study for students of the novel, for many years to come."--Dickens Quarterly

..". If in any doubt, consult 'The Companion to "Great Expectations"' by David Paroissien, an extraordinary behind-the-scenes tour of Dickens's novel ..."--Times Literary Supplement

"Thorough, well-considered, clear, incisive and complete, the Companion to 'Great Expectations' gives readers everything needed for its full appreciation. It is a comprehensive and enjoyable work of reference and scholarhip about Dickens as well as the novel, precisely mapped and illustrated. It takes the student through the novel's origins, completion, dense allusions, and what Graham Greene calls its 'secret prose'. We are shown it directly: written about an earlier period and addressed to its time."--K.J Fielding

"Paroissien's passion for finding the illuminating detail and for getting the detail right is evident. ... readers will find Paroissien's companionship rich in research and of breath-taking fullness."--Patrick MacCarthy, Dickens list-serv (online)

"The Dickens Companions are clearly indispensible to the scholar."--Modern Language Review (from review of 'The Companion to A Tale of Two Cities')

"The Companion to Great Expectations will remain a landmark study for students of the novel, for many years to come."--Dickens Quarterly

This new study sets out to recover and illuminate the Victorian culture and allusive verbal worlds that inform the novel. How distinctive are the story's temporal and topographical settings? How carefully has Dickens integrated Pip's life's story with the embedded histories of a mad, jilted spinster, a beautiful orphan girl, an unscrupulous con man, a fierce yet tender convict and a brilliant criminal lawyer? What relevance does the then of Pip's childhood and the now when he relates the story of his evolution into a gentleman have to the revised, controversial ending Dickens adopted on the advice of a fellow novelist?
David Paroissien draws on a range of nineteenth-century sources to illuminate the novel's late Georgian and mid-Victorian contexts.