Editing Great Expectations (section)

===Beginning===
In his ''Book of Memoranda'', begun in 1855, Dickens wrote names for possible characters: Magwitch, Provis, Clarriker, Compey, Pumblechook, Orlick, Gargery, Wopsle, Skiffins, some of which became familiar in ''Great Expectations''. There is also a reference to a "knowing man", a possible sketch of Bentley Drummle.<ref name="s259">{{harvnb|Paul Schlicke|1999|p=259}}</ref> Another evokes a house full of "Toadies and Humbugs", foreshadowing the visitors to Satis House in chapter 11.<ref name="s259" /><ref>[[Fred Kaplan (biographer)|Fred Kaplan]], ed. ''Dickens' Book of Memoranda'', 1981.</ref> [[Margaret Cardwell]] discovered the "premonition" of ''Great Expectations'' from a 25 September 1855 [[Letters of Charles Dickens|letter from Dickens]] to W. H. Wills, in which Dickens speaks of recycling an "odd idea" from the Christmas special "[[A House to Let]]" and "the pivot round which my next book shall revolve".<ref name="Wilkie letters">Charles Dickens, letters, Letter to [[Wilkie Collins]], 6 September 1858.</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Charles Dickens|1993|p=xiv}}</ref> The "odd idea" concerns an individual who "retires to an old lonely house…resolved to shut out the world and hold no communion with it".<ref name="Wilkie letters"/>

In an 8 August 1860 letter to [[Thomas Carlyle]], Dickens reported his agitation whenever he prepared a new book.<ref name="s259" /> A month later, in a letter to [[John Forster (biographer)|John Forster]], Dickens announced that he just had a new idea.<ref>Charles Dickens, Letters, Letter to [[John Forster (biographer)|John Forster]], mid-September 1860 (?).</ref>