&quot;Dickens&rsquo; most compactly perfect book.&quot; &mdash;George Bernard Shaw<br />&quot;&lsquo;Great Expectations&rsquo; has the most wonderful and most perfectly worked-out plot for a novel in the English language.&quot; &mdash;John Irving<br />&quot;The most unified and concentrated expression of Dickens&rsquo;s abiding sense of the world.&quot; &mdash;J. Hillis Miller<br />&quot;Unparalleled in the whole range of English fiction.&quot; &mdash;Algernon Charles Swinburne<br /><br />Considered by many to be Dickens&#39; finest novel, &quot;Great Expectations&quot; traces the growth of the book&#39;s narrator, Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man with depth of character. From its famous dramatic opening on the bleak Kentish marshes, the story abounds with some of Dickens&#39; most memorable characters. Among them are the kindly blacksmith Joe Gargery, the mysterious convict Abel Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Haversham and her beautiful ward Estella, Pip&#39;s good-hearted room-mate Herbert Pocket and the pompous Pumblechook. As Pip unravels the truth behind his own &#39;great expectations&#39; in his quest to become a gentleman, the mysteries of the past and the convolutions of fate through a series of thrilling adventures serve to steer him towards maturity and his most important discovery of all &mdash; the truth about himself.