Great Expectations

<p>Exam board: AQA, Edexcel, OCR<br>Level & Subject: GCSE English Literature<br>First teaching: September 2015<br>First examination: June 2017</p> <p> This edition of Great Expectations is perfect for GCSE-level students: it comes complete with the novel, plus an introduction providing context, and a glossary explaining key terms. </p> <p>‘Hold your noise!’ cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. ‘Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!’</p> <p>So begins Charles Dickens’s 1861 bildungsroman, the story of the orphan Pip who is catapulted from the desolate Kent marshes of his childhood to become a young gentleman in London.</p> <p>Who is Pip’s mysterious benefactor? And what role will the troubling figures of escaped convict Magwitch, decaying bride Miss Havisham and the beautiful but aloof Estella play in his prospects?</p> <p>Told through the first-person voice of the older Pip, this story of great expectations suggests gains always come at a price. Dickens depicts both the horrors of the early nineteenth-century penal system and the rapid rise and fall of fortunes that Victorian society permitted.</p>