書名：Great Expectations (Penguin Clothbound Classics)遠大前程（布麵精裝版）

難度：Lexile藍思閱讀指數1150L
作者：Charles Dickens查爾斯·狄更斯
齣版社名稱：Penguin Classics
齣版時間：2009
語種：英文
ISBN：9780141040363
商品尺寸：13.8 x 4.2 x 20.5 cm
版本：精裝
頁數：544
Great Expectations《遠大前程》，又譯《孤星血淚》，是狄更斯晚年寫成的小說，入選BBC評選的“有史以來偉大的100部小說”。故事背景為1812年聖誕節前夕至1840年鼕天，主角孤兒皮普（Pip）以自傳式手法，敘述從7歲開始的三個人生階段。小說貫徹瞭狄更斯文以載道的風格，透過劇中孤兒的跌宕起落，錶達他對生命和人性的看法。作品百年來被多次改編成電影、電視劇及舞颱劇。

本書為Penguin Classics推齣的企鵝經典英文原版，內容完整無刪減，由Charlotte Mitchell編輯並注釋，附Coralie Bickford-Smith所畫插畫。布麵硬殼精裝，適閤收藏或送禮。

Part of Penguin’s beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design.

Pip doesn’t expect much from life... His sister makes it clear that her orphaned little brother is nothing but a burden on her. But suddenly things begin to change. Pip’s narrow existence is blown apart when he finds an escaped criminal, is summoned to visit a mysterious old woman and meets the icy beauty Estella. Most astoundingly of all, an anonymous person gives him money to begin a new life in London.

Are these events as random as they seem? Or does Pip’s fate hang on a series of coincidences he could never have expected?
查爾斯·狄更斯（Charles Dickens，1812～1870），1812年生於英國的樸次茅斯。15歲時，狄更斯在一傢律師事務所當抄寫員並學習速記，此後，又在報社任新聞記者。在《記事晨報》任記者時，狄更斯開始發錶一些具有諷刺和幽默內容的短劇，主要反映倫敦的生活，逐漸有瞭名氣。他瞭解城市底層人民的生活和風土人情，這些都體現在他熱情洋溢的筆端。此後，他在不同的雜誌社任編輯、主編和發行人，其間發錶瞭幾十部長篇和短篇小說，主要作品有The Pickwick Papers《匹剋威剋外傳》、Oliver Twist《霧都孤兒》、The Old Curiosity Shop《老古玩店》、Hard Times《艱難時世》、Our Mutual Friend《我們共同的朋友》、A Tale of Two Cities《雙城記》等。

Charles Dickens (1812-70) had his first, astounding success with his first novel The Pickwick Papers and never looked back. In an extraordinarily full life he wrote, campaigned and spoke on a huge range of issues, and was involved in many of the key aspects of Victorian life, by turns cajoling, moving and irritating. He completed fourteen full-length novels and volume after volume of journalism. His thirteenth novel, A Tale of Two Cities is one of his most famous works.
The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, A Christmas Carol, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood are also published in the Penguin English Library.
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 beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.