Editing Great Expectations (section)

===Publication in ''All the Year Round''===
[[File:Publicité pour Great Expectations dans All the Year Round.jpeg|thumb|left|Advertisement for ''Great Expectations'' in ''[[All the Year Round]]'']]
Dickens was pleased with the idea, calling it "such a very fine, new and grotesque idea" in a letter to Forster.<ref name=Hollington /> He planned to write "a little piece", a "grotesque tragi-comic conception", about a young hero who befriends an escaped convict, who then makes a fortune in Australia and anonymously bequeaths his property to the hero. In the end, the hero loses the money because it is forfeited to the Crown. In his biography of Dickens, Forster wrote that in the early idea "was the germ of Pip and Magwitch, which at first he intended to make the groundwork of a tale in the old twenty-number form".<ref name="Forster9.3">{{harvnb|John Forster|1872–1874|p=9.3}}</ref> Dickens presented the relationship between Pip and Magwitch pivotal to ''Great Expectations'' but without Miss Havisham, Estella, or other characters he later created.

As the idea and Dickens's ambition grew, he began writing. However, in September, the weekly ''All the Year Round'' saw its sales fall, and its flagship publication, ''A Day's Ride'' by [[Charles Lever]], lost favour with the public. Dickens "called a council of war", and believed that to save the situation, "the one thing to be done was for [him] to strike in".<ref>Charles Dickens, ''Letters'', Letter to John Forster, 4 October 1860.</ref> The "very fine, new and grotesque idea" became the magazine's new support: weeklies, five hundred pages, just over one year (1860–1861), thirty-six episodes, starting 1 December. The magazine continued to publish Lever's novel until its completion on 23 March 1861,<ref name="s260"/> but it became secondary to ''Great Expectations''. Immediately, sales resumed, and critics responded positively, as exemplified by ''[[The Times]]''{{'}}s praise: "''Great Expectations'' is not, indeed, [Dickens's] best work, but it is to be ranked among his happiest".<ref>{{cite news |last=Dallas |first=E. S. |title=Great Expectations |url=http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/viewArticle.arc?pageId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1861-10-17-06 |access-date=25 January 2013 |work=[[The Times]] |date=17 October 1861 |page=6 |url-access=subscription }}{{dead link|date=April 2025|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref>

Dickens, whose health was not the best, felt "The planning from week to week was unimaginably difficult" but persevered.<ref name="s260">{{harvnb|Paul Schlicke|1999|p=260}}</ref> He thought he had found "a good name", decided to use the first person "throughout", and thought the beginning was "excessively droll": "I have put a child and a good-natured foolish man, in relations that seem to me very funny".<ref name="Dickens1860">Charles Dickens, ''Letters'', Letter to John Forster, beginning October 1860.</ref> Four weekly episodes were "ground off the wheel" in October 1860,<ref>Charles Dickens, ''Letters'', Letter to Wilkie Collins, 14 October 1860.</ref> and apart from one reference to the "bondage" of his heavy task,<ref>Charles Dickens, ''Letters'', Letter to [[Edmund Yates]], 24 February 1861.</ref> the months passed without the anguished cries that usually accompanied the writing of his novels.<ref name="s260"/> He did not even use the ''Number Plans'' or ''Mems'';<ref group="N">Nineteen double sheets folded in half: on the left, names, incidents, and expressions; on the right, sections of the current chapter.</ref> he had only a few notes on the characters' ages, the tide ranges for chapter 54, and the draft of an ending. In late December, Dickens wrote to [[Mary Louisa Boyle|Mary Boyle]] that "''Great Expectations'' [is] a very great success and universally liked".<ref name=Boyle>Charles Dickens, ''Letters'', Letter to Mary Boyle, 28 December 1860.</ref>

[[File:Dickensjunior-1874.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|[[Charles Dickens Jr.]] (in 1874), possibly the model for Herbert Pocket]]
Dickens gave six readings from 14 March to 18 April 1861, and in May, Dickens took a few days' holiday in [[Dover]]. On the eve of his departure, he took some friends and family members for a trip by boat from [[Blackwall, London|Blackwall]] to [[Southend-on-Sea]]. Ostensibly for pleasure, the mini-cruise was actually a working session for Dickens to examine banks of the river in preparation for the chapter devoted to Magwitch's attempt to escape.<ref name="Forster9.3"/> Dickens then revised Herbert Pocket's appearance, no doubt, asserts Margaret Cardwell, to look more like his son [[Charles Dickens Jr.|Charley]].<ref>{{harvnb|Charles Dickens|1993|p=xxvii–xxx}}</ref> On 11 June 1861, Dickens wrote to Macready that ''Great Expectations'' had been completed and on 15 June, asked the editor to prepare the novel for publication.<ref name="s260" />