Originally published in serial form from December 1860 to August 1861, Great Expectations is the ?autobiography? of Pip, as he transformed from apprentice village blacksmith to a London gentleman. Unlike many of Dickens?s earlier works, the novel is not so much a protest against social evils as a sustained meditation upon the process of social reform in Victorian England. It is this which gives such importance to the book?s handling of the theme of the gentleman, a theme central both to Dickens?s society and to his own life story.