Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Great expectations..........met! (109 words)
by hayley - written on 21/07/00, updated on 21/07/00 (Very useful, 292 readings)
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'Great Expectations' is one of the greatest books in the English language. Dickens has a knack in all of his novels for creating atmosphere and drawing the reader into the darkness of Dickensian England. This book becomes alive with Dickens' careful choice of language in creating characters to care for and an atmosphere that is both ...

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Great or grating?  (296 words)
by vhart - written on 30/07/00, updated on 31/07/00 (Very useful, 147 readings)
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main strength, but there is little scope for imagination as everything is laid out for the reader with little thought needed. Of course, as always with Dickens, nothing is ever simple and no character is superfluous. Great Expectations has a somewhat complex and moralistic story to tell. Dickens is a great storyteller but you have to pay attention or you miss the slightest detail which turns out to be of key importance a few chapters later. Great Expectations was written as a series by Dickens and if you know this, it is possible to spot the 'cliff hangers'. It is one of the 'classic' novels of English Literature and as such deserves to be ...

Bleak House - Charles Dickens

Dead, your Majesty! (443 words)
by Athanasius Green - written on 14/10/00, updated on 14/10/00 (Very useful, 180 readings)
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Q. What do you call 5000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A. A good start. This little joke might serve quite adequately as a good summary of Bleak House. Yes, it has plenty of toe-curling Dickensian sentimentality and magnificent rhetoric. But, these defects forgiven, it is full of astute caricature which is often comic, caustic, salutary, pathetic. It is full of Dickensian special effects - one of the central characters spontaneously combusts, and many others are driven to one kind of madness or another. It is full of wonderful little details - a bedroom curtain held on its rail by a kitchen fork in the chaotic home of the absurd do-gooder, Mrs. Jellybee. ...