Grandes esperanzas (Great Expectations)

by Charles Dickens, Daniel Quintero (Narrated by)

Overview

El gran novelista inglés Charles Dickens en pocas obras dio rienda suelta a su imaginación creadora, sin caer en el sentimentalismo y con mucho de sátira, como lo hizo en Grandes esperanzas, su penúltima novela y considerada por la crìtica como una de las mejores de su pluma. Como acostumbraba, la obra fue escrita para ser publicada por entregas en una revista y por eso la necesidad de conservar en cada capítulo el interés, que nunca decae. La historia del joven Pip, que se halla elevado a una condición social superior a la que nació y que cae en las manos de Stella, a quien le han enseñado a torturar con su belleza a los hombres, nunca pierde el atractivo argumental y tiene además interesantes estudios de caracteres.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2000003467099
Publisher:	Editorial Fonolibros
Publication date:	09/02/2005
Edition description:	Abridged
Language:	Spanish

About the Author

Born on February 7, 1812, Charles Dickens was the second of eight children in a family burdened with financial troubles. Despite difficult early years, he became the most successful British writer of the Victorian age.

In 1824, young Charles was withdrawn from school and forced to work at a boot-blacking factory when his improvident father, accompanied by his mother and siblings, was sentenced to three months in a debtor's prison. Once they were released, Charles attended a private school for three years. The young man then became a solicitor's clerk, mastered shorthand, and before long was employed as a Parliamentary reporter. When he was in his early twenties, Dickens began to publish stories and sketches of London life in a variety of periodicals.

It was the publication of Pickwick Papers (1836-1837) that catapulted the twenty-five-year-old author to national renown. Dickens wrote with unequaled speed and often worked on several novels at a time, publishing them first in monthly installments and then as books. His early novels Oliver Twist (1837-1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839), The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), and A Christmas Carol (1843) solidified his enormous, ongoing popularity. As Dickens matured, his social criticism became increasingly biting, his humor dark, and his view of poverty darker still. David Copperfield (1849-1850), Bleak House (1852-1853), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860-1861), and Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865) are the great works of his masterful and prolific period.

In 1858 Dickens's twenty-three-year marriage to Catherine Hogarth dissolved when he fell in love with Ellen Ternan, a young actress. The last years of his life were filled with intense activity: writing, managing amateur theatricals, and undertaking several reading tours that reinforced the public's favorable view of his work but took an enormous toll on his health. Working feverishly to the last, Dickens collapsed and died on June 8, 1870, leaving The Mystery of Edwin Drood uncompleted.

Author biography from the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of David Copperfield.

Date of Birth:

February 7, 1812

Date of Death:

June 18, 1870

Place of Birth:

Portsmouth, England

Place of Death:

Gad's Hill, Kent, England

Education:

Home-schooling; attended Dame School at Chatham briefly and Wellington