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Great Expectations, first published in 1861, is the product of Dickens' mature period and one of his finest novels. Although the outline of the story bears little direct relation to Dickens' own life, it is in the deepest sense autobiographical: set in the period of the author's own childhood and told in the first person. Great Expectations is a 'Bildungsroman', in other words a novel about the education and development of a personality.

The hero, Philip Pirrip ('Pip') finds himself split by divided loyalties: to his old homelife, epitomised by the loving simplicity of Joe the blacksmith, and to the false idea of gentility which his mysteriously inherited fortune draws him towards. The novel, then, is in part about class and snobbery, and Dickens (as Chesterton pointed out long ago) here resembles his great contemporary Thackeray in providing an utterly convincing, concrete realisation of different strata of society ranging from provincial pretension to the idle self-indulgence of a London life lived without purpose.

Pip's sentimental education is brilliantly developed when he is faced by the appalling discovery that his fortune (and hence his status as a gentleman) derive from Magwitch, the convict whom he had helped many years earlier. Pip learns (painfully) to forgive and to love: he must learn not to judge by appearances or by the norms of society, but to read the language of the heart instead. Joe and Magwitch in their different ways both contribute to this process: both are in a sense father figures to him (he is an orphan), as also is the initially frightening figure of Jaggers, the lawyer who transcends the business-like limitations of his profession. The absurd Wemmick perhaps offers a paternal model, too: his kindness and integrity are soon discovered beneath the 'post-office of a mouth' which reflects the impersonal role society demands of him. With the help of these men and of Biddy whose affection and fidelity survive Pip's patronising superiority Pip is able at last to achieve integrity, to find himself.

But the story is more than a realistic tale of individuals and society Dickens deepens his novel by incorporating elements of the fairy tale and of his characteristic humour, yet he does so without ever sacrificing psychological truth. Pip's pursuit of the apparently cold and unattainable 'princess' Estella is part of his yearning for a 'better' life, coming as he does from the humble background of the village forge, and later he will battle against the 'witch' Miss Havisham, whose own disappointed life has led her to make of Estella an 'ice queen'. If victory ultimately goes to Pip, then it is a victory which costs him dear, both financially and (more importantly) spiritually.

The humour is also absolutely of a piece with the serious themes: the scenes between Joe and Pip ('ever the best of friends') at the forge are both endearing and comic, forming as they do the emotional bedrock on which Pip's later 'rescue' from his corrupted self is based.

It would surely be difficult for any listener not to respond to the imaginative power and extraordinary insight into human nature which Dickens offers: in this novel we find not only Pip and the characters who surround him, but also ourselves.