Great Expectations/Hard Times

'Great Expectations' (1861) tells the story of Pip, whose life becomes forever linked with that of an escaped convict whom he helps to escape one fateful night. Overwhelmed by Pip's kindness the convict, unbeknownst to Pip, vows to make a fortune to finance Pip's rise to the upper classes. When, after several years, the convict returns to Pip to secure his help to escape England, their lives once again intertwine with tragic consequences. The novel presents one of Dickens' most extreme caricatures in Miss Havisham, the wealthy dowager who wears only an old wedding dress and keeps all of her clocks stopped at the same time.Complications arise in Pip's love for the cold, but beautiful Estella, his misassumption that Miss Havisham is the mystery benefactor, and the tragic story of her broken heart and the men that influenced her life and her decision to raise Estella as a cold-hearted woman, full of contempt for men and for love. In 'Hard Times' (1854), Dickens questions the materialism of the 'Age of Machinery' in the scathing story of Thomas Gradgrind in the industrial nightmare of Coketown. Gradgrind teaches his children, Tom and Louisa, to stifle emotion and eschew frivolity and imagination, but unable to contain their natural instincts, Gradgrind is forced to accept the injustice of his philosophy, and the blame for their wasted lives. Based on the world-famous Nonesuch Press edition of 1937, the text is taken from the 1867 Chapman and Hall edition, which became known as the Charles Dickens edition, and was the last edition to be corrected by the author himself. The Nonesuch edition contains illustrations selected by Dickens himself, by artists including Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz'), George Cruikshank, John Leech, Robert Seymour and George Cattermole. The new Nonesuch Dickens reproduces the original elegance of these beautiful editions