Great Expectations follows the childhood and young adult years of Pip a blacksmith’s apprentice in a country village. Pip is apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman. He suddenly comes into a large fortune (his great expectations) from a mysterious benefactor and moves to London where he enters high society. The moral theme of Great Expectations is affection, loyalty, and conscience are more important than social advancement, wealth, and class.

The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie, whom he had never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Also, this novel details the people who were caught up in the wave of violence and murder that marked the French Revolution, including a young Englishman who gives up his life in order to save the husband of the woman he loves.

The novel follows the journey of the titular character, Oliver Twist. Born in a workhouse, the orphan Oliver Twist is sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker. After escaping, Oliver travels to London, where he meets the “Artful Dodger”, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin. How will he survive in this dangerous world? Oliver Twist portrays unromantically the sordid lives of criminals, and exposes the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid-19th century.