Great Expectations (A Norton Critical Edition)

by Dickens, Charles; Rosenberg, Edgar

• ISBN13: 9780393960693
• ISBN10: 0393960692
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-01-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

This Norton Critical Edition, edited by the pioneer of Great Expectations scholarship, presents the most thorough textual edition of the novel (1861) available. The newly established text is based on all extant materials and is accompanied by several textual essays. "Backgrounds" provides readers with an understanding of Great Expectations's inception and internal chronology. A discussion of the public-reading version of the novel is also included. A wonderfully rich "Contexts" section collects thirteen pieces, centering on the novel's major themes: the link between author and hero and, relatedly, Victorian notions of gentility, snobbishness, and social mobility; the often brutal training, at home and at school, of children born around 1800; and the central issues of crime and punishment. "Criticism" gathers twenty-two assessments of Great Expectations, both contemporary and modern, which offer a range of perspectives on Dickens and his novel.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix	(2)
Preface	xi	(10)
Acknowledgments	xxi	(4)
Abbreviations	xxv
The Text of Great Expectations	1	(530)
Adopted Readings	361	(6)
Textual Notes	367	(22)
Launching Great Expectations	389	(38)
Writing Great Expectations	427	(42)
A Note on Dickens's Working Plans	469	(20)
The Descriptive Headlines	489	(2)
Putting an End to Great Expectations	491	(40)
Backgrounds	531	(36)
Dickens's Letters on Great Expectations	531	(6)
Anny Sadrin
A Chronology of Great Expectations	537	(6)
Jean Callahan
The (Unread) Reading Version of Great Expectations	543	(13)
Harry Stone
The Genesis of a Novel: Great Expectations	556	(11)
Contexts	567	(50)
DICKENS AND THE WORLD OF PIP	567	(16)
James T. Fields
[Dickens among the Tombstones]	567	(2)
Edgar Rosenberg
Dickens in 1861	569	(3)
Humphry House
[Pip's Upward Mobility]	572	(4)
Robin Gilmour
[The Pursuit of Gentility]	576	(7)
CHILDHOOD LESSONS	583	(10)
Charles Dickens
[Captain Murderer]	583	(2)
Mrs. Sherwood
["Naterally Wicious: Many a Moral for the Young"]	585	(3)
The Newcastle Commission [Dame Schools and Bible Studies]	588	(5)
REFORMATORY: DOWN AND OUT IN LONDON AND BOTANY BAY	593	(16)
William Sykes
[On Gibbeting]	593	(1)
Sir Henry Hawkins
[Firing a Rick and Breaking the Sabbath]	594	(7)
Jeremy Bentham
Of Transportation	601	(2)
A Convict's Recollections of New South Wales	603	(6)
THEATRICAL	609	(8)
Samuel Richardson
[The Apprentice's Vade Mecum: A Gloss on George Barnwell]	609	(2)
Henry Fielding
[Hamlet Before Wopsle]	611	(6)
Criticism	617	(104)
CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS AND EARLY COMMENTS	617	(14)
From The Saturday Review [Dickens's Comeback]	617	(1)
From The Spectator ["The Most Successful of His Works Have Been His Most Incoherent"]	618	(1)
Henry Crabb Robinson ["I Would Rather Read a Good Review of It"]	619	(1)
E.S. Dallas
[Dickens as Serial Writer]	620	(2)
From The Dublin University Magazine [Dickens's Tiresome Clowning]	622	(1)
J.M. Capes
J.E.E.D. Acton
["Dickens Knows Nothing of Sin When It Is Not Crime"]	623	(2)
Mrs. Oliphant
["Specimens of Oddity Run Mad"]	625	(2)
George Gissing
[Dickens's Shrews]	627	(4)
ESSAYS	631	(90)
E.M. Forster
[Autumnal England]	631	(1)
Bernard Shaw
Introduction to Great Expectations	631	(10)
George Orwell
Charles Dickens	641	(3)
Humphry House
G.B.S. on Great Expectations	644	(4)
Dorothy Van Ghent
On Great Expectations	648	(6)
Julian Moynahan
The Hero's Guilt: The Case of Great Expectations	654	(9)
K.J. Fielding
The Critical Autonomy of Great Expectations	663	(5)
Christopher Ricks
Great Expectations	668	(6)
Ian Watt
Oral Dickens	674	(5)
Peter Brooks
Repetition, Repression, and Return: The Plotting of Great Expectations	679	(11)
David Gervais
The Prose and Poetry of Great Expectations	690	(8)
Michal Peled Ginsburg
Dickens and the Uncanny: Repression and Displacement in Great Expectations	698	(7)
Linda Raphael
A Re-Vision of Miss Havisham: Her Expectations and Our Responses	705	(4)
Susan Walsh
Bodies of Capital: Great Expectations and the Climacteric Economy	709	(12)
Charles Dickens: A Chronology	721	(8)
Selected Bibliography	729