书名：Great Expectations (Penguin Clothbound Classics)远大前程（布面精装版）

难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数1150L
作者：Charles Dickens查尔斯·狄更斯
出版社名称：Penguin Classics
出版时间：2009
语种：英文
ISBN：9780141040363
商品尺寸：13.8 x 4.2 x 20.5 cm
版本：精装
页数：544 （以实物为准）
Great Expectations《远大前程》，又译《孤星血泪》，是狄更斯晚年写成的小说，入选BBC评选的“有史以来伟大的100部小说”。故事背景为1812年圣诞节前夕至1840年冬天，主角孤儿皮普（Pip）以自传式手法，叙述从7岁开始的三个人生阶段。小说贯彻了狄更斯文以载道的风格，透过剧中孤儿的跌宕起落，表达他对生命和人性的看法。作品百年来被多次改编成电影、电视剧及舞台剧。

本书为Penguin Classics推出的企鹅经典英文原版，内容完整无删减，由Charlotte Mitchell编辑并注释，附Coralie Bickford-Smith所画插画。布面硬壳精装，适合收藏或送礼。

Part of Penguin’s beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design.

Pip doesn’t expect much from life... His sister makes it clear that her orphaned little brother is nothing but a burden on her. But suddenly things begin to change. Pip’s narrow existence is blown apart when he finds an escaped criminal, is summoned to visit a mysterious old woman and meets the icy beauty Estella. Most astoundingly of all, an anonymous person gives him money to begin a new life in London.

Are these events as random as they seem? Or does Pip’s fate hang on a series of coincidences he could never have expected?
查尔斯·狄更斯（Charles Dickens，1812～1870），1812年生于英国的朴次茅斯。15岁时，狄更斯在一家律师事务所当抄写员并学习速记，此后，又在报社任新闻记者。在《记事晨报》任记者时，狄更斯开始发表一些具有讽刺和幽默内容的短剧，主要反映伦敦的生活，逐渐有了名气。他了解城市底层人民的生活和风土人情，这些都体现在他热情洋溢的笔端。此后，他在不同的杂志社任编辑、主编和发行人，其间发表了几十部长篇和短篇小说，主要作品有The Pickwick Papers《匹克威克外传》、Oliver Twist《雾都孤儿》、The Old Curiosity Shop《老古玩店》、Hard Times《艰难时世》、Our Mutual Friend《我们共同的朋友》、A Tale of Two Cities《双城记》等。

Charles Dickens (1812-70) had his first, astounding success with his first novel The Pickwick Papers and never looked back. In an extraordinarily full life he wrote, campaigned and spoke on a huge range of issues, and was involved in many of the key aspects of Victorian life, by turns cajoling, moving and irritating. He completed fourteen full-length novels and volume after volume of journalism. His thirteenth novel, A Tale of Two Cities is one of his most famous works.
The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, A Christmas Carol, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood are also published in the Penguin English Library.
My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.  

I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, “Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,” I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine, who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle, I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers—pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.