'Great Expectations, The Companion Edition' Presents Dickens's Complete 1861 Text, Collated Against the First Book Edition, with the Two Endings Documented

NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2026, In 1861, Chapman and Hall of London published, in three volumes, a novel that begins with a small boy alone in a marsh churchyard and a convict rising from among the graves, and that goes on to ask what a fortune does to the person who expects it. Charles Dickens's *Great Expectations*, serialized in his own *All the Year Round* from December 1860, became the most perfectly plotted of all his novels. A new Companion Classics edition, Great Expectations, The Companion Edition, presents the complete novel, 184,218 words, all fifty-nine chapters, unabridged, in the text of the 1861 first book edition, taken from Project Gutenberg eBook #1400 and collated against Internet Archive scans of the three 1861 Chapman & Hall volumes (located-chapter token agreement 0.893-0.967; a 354-probe test across all fifty-nine chapters matched at 85.6%, every miss resolving to scan noise). The collation found and restored one substantive variant: the novel's final line is printed in its 1861 form, "I saw the shadow of no parting from her", where the later 1867 text behind the Gutenberg file reads differently.

The story itself needs no selling: Pip, an orphan raised at a blacksmith's forge; a terrifying act of childhood charity on the marshes; Satis House, where the clocks stopped twenty years ago and Estella is being raised to break hearts; and a fortune, delivered by the lawyer Mr. Jaggers on one condition, that Pip never ask where it came from. The novel prints, complete and unaltered, the ending Dickens published: the ending he substituted before publication, at his friend Bulwer-Lytton's urging, for the ending he first wrote.

Companion Material

Around the novel, the companion material, all of it original to this edition, includes an introduction on the book's double narration, the boy who lived it, the man who judges it, and on its singular honesty about snobbery and shame; a Who's Who of twelve entries, written to respect the book's secrets; three explainers, covering expectations, money, and the law (what Pip's £250 a year meant, and what a guinea charged extra), the Hulks, transportation, and the world beyond the marshes, and the making of a weekly serial in three stages; a short life of Charles Dickens; a reading schedule in four meetings built on the novel's own stages; and thirty discussion questions, spoiler-fenced by meeting, so that the visitor who climbs the stairs in Chapter XXXIX arrives unannounced. Because Dickens wrote two endings, the edition also carries a fourth explainer, printed after the novel and fenced for the final meeting, which describes and quotes in full, from John Forster's *Life of Charles Dickens*, where alone it survives, the original ending Dickens discarded: Estella happily remarried, one brief meeting in Piccadilly, a parting for good. The two endings may be compared only there, and in the final meeting's questions, by design.

Book Club Kit

Alongside the book, Great Expectations, Book Club Kit offers the edition's discussion material as a printable PDF (28 pages, US Letter) for book clubs: the four-meeting plan, the Who's Who and explainers in full, all thirty discussion questions arranged by meeting, the two-endings explainer placed after the final meeting, and Pip's Ledger, the kit's signature activity, an expectations-and-fortunes worksheet in which readers price what each fortune seemed worth, what it cost and to whom, and (in a column that stays blank until the last meeting) what it was actually worth. The kit is available for $7 through the editor's Payhip store: [links pending parent]

Great Expectations, The Companion Edition is available now as an eBook ($9.99) through Payhip: [links pending parent], and in The Classics and Companions Shop on the editor's Linktree. Print editions follow on Amazon (paperback, $19.99; hardcover, $29.99, adjusted for this volume's 694-page length; the hardcover will be retrimmed at KDP time, as the 6×9 proof exceeds the 550-page hardcover cap). The text is public domain in the United States and in life+70 countries (Charles Dickens died in 1870). The 1861 first edition was published unillustrated, and no illustrations are reproduced or claimed in this edition; its cover is an original painting made for this edition. This is an independent publication, not affiliated with or endorsed by any film, television, or stage adaptation.

About the Editor

Horace Harriott Jr. is a New York-based author and editor of more than two dozen books, including The Side Hustle Handbook, Master Playbook and The Ultimate Commissary Cookbook. This edition is part of his Companion Classics series of reading-together editions of public-domain classics.

About the Book

Great Expectations, The Companion Edition, Charles Dickens (author), Horace Harriott Jr. (editor). Companion Classics, independently published, October 2026. Text: the first book edition (Chapman & Hall, London, 1861), via Project Gutenberg eBook #1400, collated against IA scans of the three 1861 volumes; 59 chapters; 184,218 words; no illustrations (the 1861 edition was published unillustrated); interior proof 694 pages, 6 x 9 in.