Professor Read investigates Charles Dickens’s darkest novel, Great Expectations. Why would a man who wrote novels filled with comedy, angelic women, incorruptible men, and satisfying endings, write a dark novel that is ultimately about failure? What dark phantoms haunted the mind and heart of Dickens during the late 1850’s and throughout the 1860’s? And what can we learn from this haunting piece of literature? Join Professor Read as he discusses these questions and takes us on a dark and chaotic ride through the world of 19th century literature. ---- For this episode, the following sources were used:Dickens, Charles, and Charlotte Mitchell. Great Expectations. Penguin Books, 2003.; Eliot, George, et al. Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings. Penguin, 1990.; Shakespeare, William, et al. Hamlet. Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2017.; Tomalin, Claire. The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens. Knopf, 1991.; Tomalin, Claire. Charles Dickens: a Life. Penguin Press, 2012.