Great Expectations

Charles Dickens's thirteenth novel, set in Kent and London during the early and middle 19th century, is narrated in the first person by Pip, an orphan raised on the Kent marshes by his hot-tempered sister and her good-natured husband Joe Gargery, a blacksmith. As a small boy in a graveyard, Pip is accosted by an escaped convict. Later he is brought to visit the reclusive Miss Havisham and gives his heart to her cold adopted daughter, Estella. When an unknown benefactor provides the means for him to become a gentleman, his prospects change entirely. Wealth and poverty, love and rejection are among its themes. Dickens first published it as a serial in his weekly periodical All the Year Round.

Richard Branson included it on his list of 65 lifetime reads, and Pittsburgh Technology Council CEO Audrey Russo listed it among the novels she named in an interview about her reading.