Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England in 1812 and died 58 years later at his home in Gad’s Hill Place, Higham, Kent. During most of his lifetime, Queen Victoria was the British Queen. She was Queen so long that nineteenth century England is often called the Victorian Age. Many think Dickens was the greatest novelist of his time and the creator of some of the world's best known characters. The early years of the Victorian period, lasting from about 1830 to 1860, was a time of major change. There was a so-called ‘Industrial Revolution’. Many people moved to towns, far away from where they used to work in farming and from their homes in the countryside. There were large improvements in how people lived and worked in towns. Dickens played a major part in this process. In his novels, he tells of the hopes and wants of the middle classes, compared with the simple but honest lives of ‘the deserving poor’. However, improvements in how they lived had sometimes already happened before the books were printed! For example, in Great Expectations, Dickens writes about prisoners being kept on ships called ‘hulks’ but this had already stopped by 1860. It was during this time that novels began to be read by everyone. Until the 1830s, novels were expensive and usually only read by the middle classes. However, when penny magazines came out each week, novels could be read by more people. Dickens was clever at getting people to read his stories through these magazines and soon became the best-known novelist in the English-speaking world. Perhaps his greatest achievement was in making it possible for ordinary people to read novels at prices they could pay. By 1900, 97% of people could read compared with just 50% in 1800. Dickens’ wrote his novels to match the style and format of weekly episodes of the penny magazines which needed exciting endings. Dickens did more research and planning for his later novels, like Great Expectations, but it is still difficult for us nowadays to accept parts of the stories. Sometimes, it is difficult to believe the story such; for example the links between the past lives of Magwitch, Compeyson, Miss Havisham, and Estella in Great Expectations. However, this is what his readers wanted. Today, readers still love his writing because of his imagination, interesting characters, and scenes. Great Expectations was first published in parts and then printed as a book in 1861. Dickens tells how simple but honest Pip changes because of his ‘great expectations’. He becomes ashamed of kind, gentle blacksmith, Joe Gargery. He later is upset to find out the person who helped him to become a ‘gentleman’ was not the rich but hateful Miss Havisham; it is instead the prisoner he met in the churchyard at the beginning of the book, Abel Magwitch. Pip only becomes a good person again at the end of the book when he sees the mistakes that he has made, and after he has lost all his money. He values again the simple and honest friends and family that he knew when he was younger. The story of Great Expectations is similar to Dickens personal experience. It begins on the Marshes in the Thames estuary, where he had spent five years of his childhood, and it finishes withthe nearby fine house at Gad’s Hill which he owned and had dreamed of when he was young. Dickens also was fortunate to receive help and good education after a bad start in life. However, compared with Pip, he made better use of his education afterwards.