There are, however, some major thematic differences. Its influences and similarities are seen in Great Expectations. Copperfield was a happy novel, the story of a young man who came into his fortune though hard work and luck. Dickens had told friends that he had gone back and read David Copperfield and was quite struck by the story now that he looked back upon it. Some time in 1860, Dickens had started a piece that he found funny and truthful and thought it might do better as a novel: ".it so opens out before me that I can see the whole of a serial revolving on it, in a most singular and comic manner," he wrote. The idea that one must search beyond material wealth and social standings and look within themselves for happiness becomes the major theme in Great Expectations. Dickens had just separated from his wife two years earlier, there were rumors of an affair with a young actress in the newspapers, and he was spending more and more time at his home in Chatham.ĭickens himself had risen to achieve greater expectations than any clerk's boy could expect, but he had not found happiness. He was involved in all aspects of English life: writing, acting, producing, going on book tours, publishing magazines, and, as always, active in social welfare and criticism.Īmidst all this, however, Dickens' private life had entered a dark period. He had come from humble beginnings, working as a child in a shoe polish factory while his family was in debtor's prison, to become the quintessential Victorian gentleman. When Dickens started his thirteenth novel, Great Expectations, in 1860, he was already a national hero. I think a good name?" Dickens to his editor before he started publishing the novel.
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