Great Expectations Charles Dickens

In periodicals

Dickens and Wills co-owned All the Year Round, one 75%, the other 25%. Since Dickens was his own publisher, he did not require a contract for his own works.[60] Although intended for weekly publication, Great Expectations was divided into nine monthly sections, with new pagination for each.[53] Harper's Weekly published the novel from 24 November 1860 to 5 August 1861 in the US and All the Year Round published it from 1 December 1860 to 3 August 1861 in the UK. Harper's paid £1,000 (equivalent to £100,000 in 2021) for publication rights. Dickens welcomed a contract with Tauchnitz 4 January 1861 for publication in English for the European continent.

Publications in Harper's Weekly were accompanied by forty illustrations by John McLenan;[61] however, this is the only Dickens work published in All the Year Round without illustrations.

Editions

Robert L Patten identifies four American editions in 1861 and sees the proliferation of publications in Europe and across the Atlantic as "extraordinary testimony" to Great Expectations's popularity.[62] Chapman and Hall published the first edition in three volumes in 1861,[2][3][4] five subsequent reprints between 6 July and 30 October, and a one-volume edition in 1862. The "bargain" edition was published in 1862, the Library Edition in 1864, and the Charles Dickens edition in 1868. To this list, Paul Schlicke adds "two meticulous scholarly editions", one Clarendon Press published in 1993 with an introduction by Margaret Cardwell[63] and another with an introduction by Edgar Rosenberg, published by Norton in 1999.[53] The novel was published with one ending (visible in the four online editions listed in the External links at the end of this article). In some 20th century editions, the novel ends as originally published in 1867, and in an afterword, the ending Dickens did not publish, along with a brief story of how a friend persuaded him to a happier ending for Pip, is presented to the reader (for example, 1987 audio edition by Recorded Books[64]).

In 1862, Marcus Stone,[65] son of Dickens's old friend, the painter Frank Stone, was invited to create eight woodcuts for the Library Edition. According to Paul Schlicke, these illustrations are mediocre yet were included in the Charles Dickens edition, and Stone created illustrations for Dickens's subsequent novel, Our Mutual Friend.[53] Later, Henry Mathew Brock also illustrated Great Expectations and a 1935 edition of A Christmas Carol,[66] along with other artists, such as John McLenan,[67] F. A. Fraser,[68] and Harry Furniss.[69]

First edition publication schedule