60 Fun Facts About Great Expectations

What is the full name of the orphan nicknamed Pip?

His friend Herbert refuses to call him Philip, saying it 'sounds like a moral boy out of the spelling-book', and gives him a musical nickname instead.

In which weekly periodical, owned by Dickens himself, was the novel first serialised from December 1860?

Dickens 'struck in' with the story to rescue the magazine's falling sales after Charles Lever's A Day's Ride flopped with readers.

Where does the novel famously open?

Seven-year-old Pip is visiting his parents' graves on Christmas Eve 1812 when an escaped convict seizes him.

What two things does the convict demand that Pip bring him?

Pip steals a file from Joe's tools plus a pork pie and brandy meant for Christmas dinner; the convict later confesses to the theft to clear him.

What is the trade of Joe Gargery, Pip's kindly brother-in-law?

Pip is apprenticed to him and once dreamed of nothing better, before Miss Havisham's house teaches him to be ashamed of the forge.

What is the name of the decaying mansion where Miss Havisham lives?

Dickens's friend John Forster said it was based on a real house in Rochester, near where the author lived.

What has Miss Havisham worn every day since she was jilted?

She also wears only one shoe and has left the wedding breakfast and cake to rot on the table.

At what time have all the clocks in Miss Havisham's house been stopped?

It is the exact minute she received the letter from her fiancé calling off the wedding.

What was the trade of Miss Havisham's father, the source of her fortune?

Her wealth comes from rents on properties he left her, which the novel treats as 'pure' money untainted by her own labour.

Which pompous corn merchant, Joe's uncle, first sends Pip to Miss Havisham's house?

He later claims to be the original architect of Pip's expectations, and turns the town against Pip when they collapse.

What is the name of Miss Havisham's beautiful, cold adopted daughter?

She has been raised specifically to break men's hearts, and warns Pip repeatedly that she cannot love him.

Which 'pale young gentleman' fights Pip at Miss Havisham's and later becomes his best friend?

Pip wins easily; years later he secretly buys Herbert a partnership at the shipbroker Clarriker's.

Who is the surly journeyman at the forge who attacks Pip's sister and later tries to murder Pip?

He lures Pip to a sluice-house with an anonymous letter and is about to strike with a hammer when Herbert and Startop burst in.

What weapon is used in the attack on Mrs Joe?

Pip is horrified, believing it is the same iron he helped free the convict from with the stolen file.

What is the profession of Mr Jaggers, who brings Pip news of his expectations?

He constantly chews the same fingernail and washes his hands with scented soap after every client.

Where in London do Pip and Herbert share rooms?

Pip finds London a place of litter and filth, not the 'soft white city' he had imagined.

Which brutish fellow pupil of Pip's eventually marries Miss Havisham's adopted daughter?

He wants only the Havisham money and treats her abusively until his death; Jaggers nicknames him 'the Spider'.

Jaggers's clerk Wemmick lives with his 'Aged Parent' in what kind of home in Walworth?

Wemmick keeps his office self and his Walworth self strictly separate, and marries Miss Skiffins, who swaps green gloves for white.

What annual income is Pip granted when he comes of age at 21?

It is worth about £43,000 today; he and Herbert nonetheless run up debts.

Who turns out to be Pip's real benefactor?

Transported to Australia, he made a fortune as a free man and returns under a false name, on pain of death, to see the gentleman he made.

To which colony had the convict been transported?

He grew wealthy there as a sheep farmer among other jobs, but any transported convict who returned to England faced execution.

Under what false name does the convict live after secretly returning to England?

Pip's first reaction on learning the truth is disgust rather than gratitude, and he stops taking the money.

Who was the second convict fighting Magwitch on the marshes, and the man who jilted Miss Havisham?

A gentleman fraudster, he got the lighter sentence at their trial by blaming Magwitch, which fuels the lifelong hatred.

Who are the real parents of Miss Havisham's adopted daughter?

Jaggers saved Molly from the gallows on a murder charge and quietly placed her baby with Miss Havisham.

How is Miss Havisham fatally injured?

Pip burns himself trying to save her, moments after she has begged his forgiveness for ruining him and her adopted daughter.

Where are Pip and his friends rowing the convict when the police boat intercepts them?

His old enemy is aboard the police boat to identify him; the two enemies grapple in the river and only Magwitch comes up alive.

What happens to the convict's fortune after his conviction?

Pip visits the dying man in the prison hospital and tells him his daughter is alive and that he loves her.

Who nurses Pip through his illness in London and pays off his debts?

Pip goes home intending to propose to Biddy, only to arrive on the day she has married Joe.

In which city does Pip work for eleven years with Herbert before returning to England?

He rises to third in the shipbroking firm Clarriker's, and only then does Herbert learn who bought his partnership.

Where does Pip meet the widowed heroine in the novel's final scene?

The published ending has him see 'no shadow of another parting from her'; the original ending was far bleaker.

Which fellow novelist persuaded Dickens to rewrite the ending because the original was too sad?

In the discarded ending Pip, still single, briefly meets the remarried widow in a London street; Shaw and Orwell both preferred it.

Which writer dismissed the novel as 'that Pip nonsense' yet greeted each instalment with 'roars of laughter'?

George Bernard Shaw later called the book 'all of one piece and consistently truthful'.

Roughly how many copies of the magazine were sold each week during the serial?

The circulating library Mudie's alone bought about 1,400 copies and reckoned thirty people read each one.

The novel was Dickens's second to be narrated entirely in the first person. Which was the first?

Critic Paul Schlicke calls this one 'the more spiritual and intimate autobiography' of the two.

Which real building near Rochester did Dickens reportedly use as the model for Miss Havisham's home?

The name of the fictional house was borrowed from a Rochester house where an MP once entertained Queen Elizabeth I.

Which jilted Australian woman who let her wedding breakfast rot for decades was long thought a model for Miss Havisham?

She lived in Newtown, Sydney, behind a chained front door; the connection has never been proven.

What nickname does Herbert give Pip, after a composer, thanks to a piece of music about a forge?

The piece is a set of harpsichord variations about a forge; Herbert says the name Philip sounds like a moral boy from a spelling-book.

Which village church clerk moves to London to become an actor under the stage name Mr Waldengarver?

His Hamlet in chapter 31 is one of the book's great comic set pieces.

Where in the BBC's 2003 Big Read poll did the novel rank?

Dickens's Book of Memoranda from 1855 already listed names like Magwitch, Orlick and Gargery waiting for a story.

Which publisher issued the novel in three volumes in October 1861?

Because Dickens owned the magazine, he needed no contract for the serial itself.

Which American magazine ran the serial from November 1860, a week ahead of Britain?

Although meant to be weekly, the British text was also cut into nine monthly sections with fresh page numbers.

Who directed the celebrated 1946 film version?

He was inspired by a 1939 stage abridgement written by Alec Guinness, who played Herbert in both.

Who played the adult Pip in the 1946 film?

Jean Simmons played the young heroine and Finlay Currie the convict; Simmons returned as Miss Havisham in a 1989 version.

Which two Oscars did the 1946 film win?

It was the first British film to win the cinematography Oscar; Roger Ebert later called it 'the greatest of all the Dickens films'.

Alfonso Cuarón's 1998 modern-dress film renamed Pip as Finn. Who played him?

Gwyneth Paltrow was the heroine, Anne Bancroft the Havisham figure Nora Dinsmoor, and Robert De Niro the convict, all in contemporary New York.

Who played Miss Havisham in Mike Newell's 2012 film?

Ralph Fiennes was the convict; Gillian Anderson had taken the role in the BBC's 2011 serial and Olivia Colman did in 2023.

Which animated series gave Pip his own episode in 2000, with Trey Parker voicing Miss Havisham?

The show's Pip character had been a running background figure since its first season.

Which Peter Carey novel of 1997 reimagines the convict's return to England?

It won the Commonwealth Writers Prize; Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip (2006) later took the book to a Pacific island.

How did Dickens describe the plot when he first announced it to John Forster in 1860?

He planned only 'a little piece' about a boy who befriends a convict who then makes a fortune in Australia and secretly leaves it to him.

What had Dickens bought in 1856, fulfilling a childhood dream, shortly before writing the novel?

He moved there in 1858, the year his marriage to Catherine collapsed, and the novel's return to Kent is read as a homecoming.

Which Dickens character from an 1858 Christmas story anticipates Pip by dreaming of a fortune and being let down?

He appears in 'Going into Society'; scholar Margaret Cardwell spotted the parallel.

What does the convict tell seven-year-old Pip his imaginary accomplice will do if the boy fails him?

The 'terrible young man' is pure invention to frighten the child into fetching 'wittles' and a file.

What is Great Expectations' place in the sequence of Dickens's novels?

Only Our Mutual Friend followed it to completion; The Mystery of Edwin Drood was left unfinished at his death.

Whose flagging serial, A Day's Ride, prompted Dickens to 'strike in' with Great Expectations in 1860?

Sales of All the Year Round had been falling; the new serial ran for 36 weekly episodes and revived them at once.

How many weekly episodes did the original serialisation of Great Expectations run to?

Dickens found the week-to-week planning 'unimaginably difficult' but persevered from 1 December 1860 into 1861.

Which illustrator supplied forty pictures for the serial's run in Harper's Weekly?

Oddly, it was the only Dickens work in All the Year Round to appear without illustrations; Marcus Stone later cut eight woodcuts for the Library Edition.

Which reviewer's May 1862 piece in Blackwood's Magazine vilified the otherwise widely praised novel?

Later critics from Shaw to Orwell rated it among Dickens's finest, and it placed 17th in the BBC's Big Read.

Which character teaches at the evening school in Pip's village and later marries Joe Gargery?

She is Mr Wopsle's second cousin, and by the novel's end she and Joe have a son named Pip.

Miss Havisham was defrauded by Compeyson in league with which relative of hers?

Compeyson, the professional swindler engaged to marry her, later became Magwitch's sworn enemy.

What does Miss Skiffins change about her gloves when she marries Wemmick?

She had been an occasional visitor to Wemmick's miniature castle in Walworth.