Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 tháng 2 năm 1812 – 9 tháng 6 năm 1870), bút danh "Boz", là nhà tiểu thuyết gia người Anh nổi tiếng nhất thời đại Nữ hoàng Victoria. Charles Dickens được xem là một trong những nhà văn vĩ đại viết bằng ngôn ngữ tiếng Anh, ông được ca ngợi về khả năng kể truyện và trí nhớ, được nhiều người ở khắp nơi yêu mến trong suốt quãng đời của ông. | GREAT EXPECTATIONS 1867 Edition by Charles Dickens Prepared and Published by Ebd Chapter I 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 .
