Introduction and Notes by Radhika Jones In an overgrown churchyard, a grizzled convict springs upon an orphan boy named Pip. The convict terrifies Pip and threatens to kill him unless Pip helps further his escape. Later, Pip finds himself in the ruined garden where he meets the embittered and crazy Miss Havisham and her foster child Estella, with whom he immediately falls in love. After a secret benefactor gives him a fortune, Pip moves to London, where he cultivates great expectations for a life that would allow him to discard his impoverished beginnings and socialize with the idle upper class. As Pip struggles to become a gentleman and is tormented endlessly by the beautiful Estella, he slowly learns the truth about himself and his illusions. Written in the last decade of his life, Great Expectations reveals Dickens's dark attitudes toward Victorian society, its inherent class structure, and its materialism. Yet the novel persists as one of Dickens's most popular. Ricity comic and immensely readable, Great Expectations displays vividly drawa characters, moral maelstroms, and the sorrow and pity of love. Radhika Jones is a freelance writer and a doctoral candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.