Great Expectations (version 2) by Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)

This is a LibriVox recording of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, divided into episodes by chapter. Readings open by naming the chapter aloud, and a notice that the recording is in the public domain often follows. Titles pair a plain number with a Roman numeral, as in 39 - Chapter XXXIX, so the feed doubles as a table of contents. Pip tells the story himself, looking back. At twenty-three he lives in chambers at Garden Court in the Temple, down by the river, and has still heard nothing about his expectations. Herbert has gone to Marseilles on business, and Pip is alone. Dickens piles on the weather: mud deep in the streets, lead stripped from the roofs of high buildings, trees torn up in the country, and gloomy reports of shipwreck and death from the coast. Chapter XL swings from dread to comedy and back. Pip must keep a dreaded visitor safe. Hiding him is impossible with 'an inflammatory old female' and 'an animated rag-bag whom she called her niece' always looking in at keyholes, so he decides to announce that his uncle has come in from the country. Groping down the black staircase for a light, he falls over a man crouching in a corner. He and the watchman then search the stairs by lantern from bottom to top. In Chapter XLI, Pip, Herbert and Provis sit before the fire while Pip recounts the whole of the secret. Heavily in debt, bred to no calling and left with no expectations, Pip says the one thing he is fit for is to go for a soldier. Herbert, who calls him Handel, answers that soldiering won't do. The chapter closes as Provis puts away his black pipe, spreads a hand on each knee and looks round to begin his tale. Grief runs through Chapter XXXV. Pip is haunted by the figure of his sister in her chair by the kitchen fire, then walks in her funeral procession while Pumblechook fusses over his hatband and cloak. She is laid in the earth near the graves of his parents, with the marshes in view and a lark singing high above. The chapter ends on a strained parting from Biddy and the mists rising as he walks away. Estella brings a different pain in Chapter XXXVIII. She lodges at Richmond with Mrs Brandley, a young-looking widow with an old-looking daughter, one set up for frivolity and the other for theology. There she uses Pip to tease her other admirers. His spirit, he says, was always wandering about that house. Chapter XLIX takes him back to Satis House by unfrequented ways, past cathedral chimes and rooks hovering about a grey tower, and he finds Miss Havisham in a ragged chair before an ashy fire. A good place to start is the run from Chapter XXXIX to Chapter XLI, where the storm, the dreaded visitor and the secret told by the fire follow closely on one another.