Read The Classics: Great Expectations May 24, 2009

The Multnomah County Library invites you to take part in a new book series, where you can read some of the best all-time classics and discuss them under the leadership of Jay Dickson, Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College. Participation is free, but registration is required. You can register online at http://www.multcolib.org/events/classics/1800.html
A limited number of books will be available free of charge for those who pre-register.

With the possible exception of only Jane Austen, Charles Dickens is often considered the most quintessentially English of all great novelists. This 1860–61 novel, one of his best loved, amply displays why. A quintessential Bildungsroman, or novel of development, Great Expectations tells the story of how the young orphan Philip Pirrip (commonly known as "Pip") comes into enough money from a mysterious source so that he can leave his seaside village in pursuit of more fortune and of love (in the form of the cold and fascinating Estella) in London. In its conscious echoes of Frankenstein, Dickens's novel returns us not only to questions of parentage and origins but also to matters of ethical responsibility, all the while introducing us to one of the more memorable coteries of characters (here including the kindly blacksmith Joe Gargery, the alarmingly Rhadamanthine lawyer Jaggers, the escaped convict Abel Magwitch, and the vengeful recluse Miss Havisham) for which its author was, and remains, so famous.

Official Website: http://www.multcolib.org/events/classics/1800.html