I mentioned one of my passion projects was to read the entirety of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations aloud following the original serialised publication dates.
Well, I’ve got started on that with the first two chapters, with chapter one released today.
In an ideal world, I would have read this great work in front of a crackling fireplace, in a red upholstered armchair, beside a bookshelf. But as my current place is sans those things, I decided to give more weight to the actual narration.
Soundscapes, music, character voices – these are what I’m concentrating on. Hopefully I’ve summoned a good marsh atmosphere with chapter one, and I had particular fun giving Magwitch his voice. I thought it would still be worth releasing the video version of the narration, though of course it will be available in audiobook form at some point too.
Great Expectations: Chapter One
Why am I reading Great Expectations aloud?
A few reasons:
- Great Expectations was supposed to be read in a certain way. It was published weekly, with the first week delivering chapters one and two, then next week brought chapters three and four, and the week after that delivered chapter five. People would buy the story in broadsheet magazines and they would read it aloud, as a family, in the evening in front of a fire. That was their television. So if you want to read Great Expectations the way Dickens intended, you should listen to it read aloud (not necessarily to me, just saying).
- I’m personally refining my narration skills. I’ve learnt a bit about breathing techniques and using voice for character creation, but I’m a firm believer that one learns by doing. And doing means doing publicly. You learn more by writing and publishing than you’ll ever learn just writing. You must ship!
- I think there’s been a swing towards artisan crafts in every industry. I wrote about that here: My Lockdown Reading Habits & Revelations. People are tired of huge conglomerates and desperately want to support indie. Whether that means supporting a family run greengrocer and paying a little extra rather than support a supermarket chain, or supporting an indie bookstore and waiting an extra few days for your book, or pledging to support a creator on Patreon or similar services. There’s charm to being rough round the edges. We lose some shine when we go indie, but we gain so much more in personability.
- It’s part of a two-fold attack plan for Hardcore Literature. One – analysing great literature. Two – reading, relishing in, and sharing great literature. Both have their place.
- Great Expectations is a great work. One of my favourites. If I can get just one person to read it, I’ll be happy. And if no one reads it, at least I had fun.
Great Expectations Original Serialisation & Publication History
If you want to follow along with the original reading experience, subscribe to the Hardcore Literature channel and pace your consumption out.
That means you get two chapters for the first week. However you wish to read/listen to them is up to you. Binge both chapters back-to-back, if you like. That’ll take you around 20 minutes. Then you’ll have to wait a week to get the next two. No skipping ahead.
If you want to be really hardcore, you can line up your listening experience with the actual dates on which each chapter was published. You’ll notice that the beginning of Great Expectations has quite a Christmas vibe. That’s not random. It was originally published at the beginning of December, so people would have been gearing up for the holiday season.
Great Expectations was first published in a Victorian periodical called All the Year Round from 1860 to 1861, with the first two chapters being published on the first of December.
All the Year Round was actually founded, owned, and edited by Charles Dickens, with a lifespan lasting from 1859 to 1895. It serialised many novels, with much of Dickens own work appearing in the magazine, such as A Tale of Two Cities which was the magazine’s debut. It was a weekly magazine with stories that were supposed to see the readers through an entire year of their lives. Again, quite similar to following a season of your favourite TV show. Great Expectations, incidentally, ran from December all the way through to August of the following year.
Other great authors contributed to All the Year Round. You’ll likely recognise them. Wilkie Collins, for instance, contributed the magnificent Women in White and The Moonstone, Anthony Trollope contributed The Duke’s Children, Elizabeth Gaskell contributed works, as did Sheridan Le Fanu with his ghost stories.
Funnily, Dickens actually wasn’t going to publish Great Expectations in All the Year Round, but sales of the magazine were dropping due to the featured novel, A Day’s Ride by Charles Lever not being very popular. So Dickens stepped in and captured the public’s imagination with his rich tale of Pip, Magwitch, Joe, and Miss Havisham. Great Expectations was his thirteenth novel, coming after other classics such as Oliver Twist, The Old Curiosity Shop, David Copperfield, and Bleak House. It’s my personal favourite Dickens novel, though I believe that one could make argument of Bleak House being contender for Dickens’ best, and was his last great work, published less than a decade before the writer’s untimely death.
Here’s the original publication dates for Great Expectations so you can follow along at home:
All the Year Round, Volume IV, 1860-1861
- December 1, 1860: i, ii
- December 8, 1860: iii-iv
- December 15, 1860: v
- December 22, 1860: vi-vii
- December 29, 1860: viii
- January 5, 1861: ix-x
- January 12, 1861: xi
- January 19, 1861: xii, xiii
- January 26, 1861: xiv, xv
- February 2, 1861: xvi-xvi
- February 9, 1861: xviii
- February 16, 1861: xix
- February 23, 1861: xx, xxi
- March 2, 1861: xxii
- March 9, 1861: xxiii, xxiv
- March 16, 1861: xxv, xxvi
- March 23, 1861: xvii, xviii
All the Year Round, Volume V, 1861
- March 30, 1861: xxix
- April 6, 1861: xxx, xxxi
- April 13, 1861: xxxii, xxxiii
- April 20, 1861: xxxiv, xxxv
- April 27, 1861: xxxvi, xxxvii
- May 4, 1861: xxxviii,
- May 11, 1861: xxxix
- May 18, 1861: xl
- May 25, 1861: xli, xlii
- June 1, 1861: xliii, xliv
- June 8, 1861: xlv, xlvi
- June 5, 1861: xlvii, xlviii
- June 22, 1861: xlix, l
- June 29, 1861: li, lii
- July 6, 1861: liii
- July 13, 1861: liv
- July 20, 1861: lv, lvi
- July 27, 1861: lvii
- August 3, 1861: lviii, lix
Quite a nice rhythm to the release schedule, don’t you think? Two chapters, two chapters, one chapter. Two chapters, two chapters, one chapter. Two chapters, two chapters, one chapter. You’ll look forward to those two chapter weeks, I tell you!
What edition of Great Expectations should you read?
All I can do is let you know what edition of Great Expectations I’m reading from.
My edition is not easy to get hold of, but you can track it down if you try. I got my edition over a decade ago when a magazine called The Dickens Collection was released in Great Britain. Each month you’d get a beautiful hardbound volume of one of Dickens’ books replete with original sketches by Boz, and an accompanying magazine that told you about the book and the historical and biographical context. It was great. And I’ve seen that people are reselling this wonderful edition on eBay.
A thought experiment, and a favour:
I’m just throwing ideas out there. But here’s one that tantalises my geeky side. All the Year Round ran other works alongside Great Expectations. So an issue that delivered the latest instalment of Pip’s tale would also include poetry, other stories, and essays. Wouldn’t it be rather cool to give voice to those too? Then one can see what else was being read along with Dickens’ story.
And my favour is two-fold:
- If you think this is a nifty idea, let me know. Subscribe, like, comment.
- What else would be cool to do a serialised narration of? I’m already thinking of works by Jane Austen, Wilkie Collins, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (though Stephen Fry’s narration surely cannot be contended with), but if you have any specific stories you’d enjoy a passionate narration of, let me know.