3 August 1861: Great Expectations is completed

Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published as a serial in Dickens’s weekly periodical All the Year Round, with the final instalment appearing on 3 August 1861. In October of the same year, the full novel was published in three volumes.

The story depicts the education of an orphan boy named Pip and is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century. It contains some of Dickens’s most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. Full of extreme imagery, poverty, prison ships and chains, and fights to the death, Great Expectations has a colourful cast of characters who have entered popular culture. These include the eccentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold Estella, and Joe, the unsophisticated and kind blacksmith.

Upon its release, the novel received near universal acclaim. During the serial publication, Dickens was pleased with the public response to Great Expectations and its sales.

Great Expectations is considered one of the greatest and most sophisticated novels by Dickens and is popular both with readers and literary critics. It has been translated into many languages and had more than 250 adaptations on stage and screen.