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Great Expectations
By Charles Dickens
Great Expectations
Chapter 1
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 author-
ity 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 unreason-
ably 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 charac-
ter 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-pock-
ets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within,
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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 Geor-
giana wife of the above, were dead and buried