Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

When seven-year-old orphan Pip meets Estella, the adopted daughter of the wealthy spinster Miss Havisham, he falls in love with her despite her cold and contemptuous ways. Pip is determined to escape poverty and become a gentleman to win Estella’s affections. Miss Havisham, however, arranges for him to become merely a common labourer in his brother-in-law’s business, disappointing Pip greatly. But the arrival of a lawyer from London gives Pip hope when he learns that he has a secret, wealthy benefactor. Pip travels to London to begin his education as a gentleman, still hoping to endear himself to Estella. Then, one day, a boyhood kind deed returns, altering the course of Pip’s life when he learns the identity of his benefactor…Great Expectations is one of Charles Dickens’s finest and most well received novels – a coming-of-age story about social ambition, love, crime and the disappointment of expectations.