50 episodes listed below
Dickens's Great Expectations, heard one chapter at a time.
Each episode of this reading holds one numbered chapter of Great Expectations and begins right at its chapter heading. The early chapters keep Pip on the marshes, where he feeds a convict with a stolen pie, lives under his sister's heavy hand and runs straight into a file of soldiers.
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Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a reading of the novel, divided so that each episode carries one numbered chapter. Every episode begins at its chapter heading and moves directly into the story. That story belongs to Pip, who explains at the top of Chapter 01 how his infant tongue shortened Philip to the name everyone came to use. He never saw his mother or father. He builds his first picture of them from the shapes of the letters on their tombstones, a detail that is odd, funny and a little sad all at once. The churchyard does not stay quiet. A convict sets the boy on top of a gravestone, questions him about his family and announces that he has half a mind to eat him, while Pip clings to the stone and answers with a frightened 'sir'. Home is hardly safer. His sister, Mrs. Joe, is more than twenty years his senior and proud of having raised him 'by hand', a phrase Pip takes literally, since her hand is hard and heavy and lands on her husband as well as on him. That husband is Joe, the blacksmith, a fair man with flaxen curls whose alarm when Pip's bread and butter disappears down the boy's leg is pure kitchen comedy. Pip later takes a pie from the pantry and a file from among Joe's tools and runs for the marshes. Chapter 03 is soaked in weather: damp on the window as though a goblin had been crying there all night, and fog so dense the village signpost vanishes until Pip is right beneath it. The convict wolfs down everything at once, shaking with ague, and the last Pip hears of him is the file still working at his fetter in the mist. Chapter 04 moves indoors to a crowded Christmas dinner, where Pip is wedged against the table with a 'Pumblechookian' elbow in his eye and a robbed pantry on his conscience. It ends with him bolting for the door and running straight into soldiers, one of them holding out a pair of handcuffs. Chapter 05 turns the marsh into a manhunt, with Pip riding on Joe's back as the soldiers spread out under a low red sunset, and it closes at the water's edge beside a prison-ship Pip likens to a wicked Noah's Ark. Chapter 07 is warmer. Joe recites, with open pride, a tombstone couplet he made up himself and never had carved because poetry costs money, and the chapter ends on his farewell, 'God bless you, Pip, old chap', as the boy sets off wondering what on earth he is expected to play at Miss Havisham's. What a listener gets is Dickens's own sentences, where a joke about a pig's vanity sits a chapter away from a gibbet on the skyline. Because the episodes follow the chapter numbers, Chapter 01 is where to start.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants Dickens's own sentences rather than a summary or a lecture about them, and who is happy to follow Pip's story one numbered chapter at a time.
What sets it apart: It reads the novel rather than discussing it: each episode is a single numbered chapter that starts at its chapter heading, so what comes through is the text itself, with its comedy and its menace intact.
From the opening passage itself of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, the reader is drawn into the world of the hero, Pip, who is at that time, seven years old. The author creates an unforgettable atmosphere: the gloom of the graveyard, the melancholy of the orphan boy, the mists rising over the marshes and the terrifying appearance of an escaped convict in chains. Told in first person (one of the only two books that Dickens used this form for, the other being David Copperfield) Great Expectations is a classic coming of age novel, in which we trace the growth and evolution of Pip or Philip Pirrip to give his full name. Pip has lost his parents very early in life and is being brought up b…
A missing Christmas pork pie gives your guilty conscience more trouble than the soldiers at the door.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Pip's secret theft turns a comic household portrait into an urgent run toward the marshes.
Chapter II turns Pip's home into a comic trap. Mrs. Jo Gargery's rule rests on the old claim that she brought him up "by hand," while Joe stands as her soft, bruised opposite: strong as Hercules, yet helpless under her force, and so anxious for Pip that his words keep tripping…
A Christmas dinner turns into a comic tribunal before soldiers and handcuffs bring Pip's fear to the door.
Pip comes to Christmas dinner braced for arrest, but no constable is there, and the robbery remains undiscovered while Mrs. Joe drives the household through its holiday routine. Dickens turns the table into a trap: Joe's crossed forefingers quietly warn Pip about Mrs.
A missing pie turns into a rain-swept marsh pursuit and the grim sight of the Black Hulk.
Dinner is barely back under control before soldiers arrive with handcuffs and a job for Joe, and the missing pie becomes Mrs. Joe's pressing household mystery. The sergeant's request pulls Joe, the narrator, and Mr.
Pip's literal childhood logic opens into Joe's tender history and an uneasy errand to Miss Havisham.
Pip's young mind treats churchyard inscriptions and catechism as firm, literal rules, while his daily place in the village forms around Joe's forge, small errands, and whatever work the neighbours can offer.
Pip enters a stopped-time room where a command to play begins to turn embarrassment into shame.
Pip's visit to Miss Havisham starts in the comic clutter of Mr. Pumblechook's seed shop, where brown-paper packets and corduroys make the ordinary world feel faintly ridiculous. Then the mood tightens.
Chapter 02 of Great Expectations follows Pip through Christmas Eve under Mrs.
In Great Expectations Chapter 04, Pip spends Christmas Day terrified that Mrs.
Great Expectations Chapter 05 opens with a file of soldiers arriving at Joe Gargery's forge and demanding help with a damaged handcuff lock.
Great Expectations Chapter 07 follows Pip from the churchyard tombstones to Biddy’s evening school, where he finally starts to read, write, and cipher.
["Chapter 8 opens with Mr.
In Chapter IX of Great Expectations, Pip invents a black-velvet coach, dogs, and flags to mislead Mrs.
Pip returns to Miss Havisham's house and meets Estella's relatives, whom he judges to be “toadies and humbugs.” Camilla describes crying over deep mourning trimmings for a bereaved child, then buying them in the rain.
This episode continues the story of Pip as he discusses Orlick's character with his guardian Mr.
Pip reflects on his sister's death and his conflicted feelings of regret and anger toward her and her attacker.
This episode is a reading of Chapter 38 of Great Expectations, where Pip describes his tortured relationship with Estella while she lives with Mrs.
This episode continues the story of Pip at age 23, living in London, feeling lonely and anxious as he awaits news about his expectations.
A reading of Chapter 40 of Great Expectations, where Pip discovers a man crouching on the stairs.
This episode features a dramatic reading of Chapter 42 of Great Expectations, where the convict Magwitch narrates his life story to Pip.
A reading of Chapter 44 of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, narrated in first person.
This episode is a reading of Chapter XLIX of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, focusing on Pip's receipt of Miss Havisham's note.