Dickens famously changed the ending of ‘Great Expectations’ at least three times: there’s a happy ending, a downbeat ending and a thoroughly ambiguous one.  Could he just not make up his mind?  Or are the different endings (and it turns out there were rather more than just three) telling us something about the place of the novel in C19th literature?

Professor John Drew explores the humour, themes and endings of this late great novel.

Additional event: Join us for lunch after the lecture, and in the afternoon for a screening of David Lean’s magnificently entertaining 1946 black and white film of the book, starring John Mills and a young Alec Guinness.  More details here, and booking form here.

John Drew, Professor of English Literature and Head of the English Department at the University of Buckingham, researches, writes and lectures on the journalistic work of Dickens and his contemporaries. He was a founder of and now directs the international research project Dickens Journals Online, which is centred around open access digital editions of two mid-century periodicals, Household Words and All the Year Round.  He is on the advisory board for the Oxford University Press Clarendon Dickens edition.