<b>Great Expectations by Charles Dickens</b> &nbsp;is the thirteenth novel by&nbsp;Charles Dickens&nbsp;and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed&nbsp;Pip&nbsp;(the book is a&nbsp;<i>bildungsroman</i>, a&nbsp;coming-of-age story).<br /><br />It is Dickens&#39;s second novel, after&nbsp;<i>David Copperfield</i>, to be fully narrated in the first person.[N 1]&nbsp;The novel was first published as a&nbsp;serial&nbsp;in Dickens&#39;s weekly periodical&nbsp;<i>All the Year Round</i>, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861,&nbsp;Chapman and Hall&nbsp;published the novel in three volumes.<br /><br />The novel is set in&nbsp;Kent&nbsp;and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens&#39;s most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict&nbsp;Abel Magwitch.&nbsp;<i>Great Expectations</i>&nbsp;is full of extreme imagery &ndash; poverty, prison ships and chains, and fights to the death &ndash; and has a colourful cast of characters who have entered popular culture.<br /><br />These include the eccentric&nbsp;Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold&nbsp;Estella, and Joe, the unsophisticated and kind&nbsp;blacksmith. Dickens&#39;s themes include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil.&nbsp;<i>Great Expectations</i>, which is popular both with readers and literary critics, has been translated into many languages and adapted numerous times into various media.