With thanks/apologies to Charles Dickens
ORIGINAL STORY BY CHARLES DICKENS ABRIDGED BY LIZ BANKES DESIGNED AND ILLUSTRATED BY JACK NOEL EDITED BY LIZ BANKES WITH LUCY COURTENAY ART-DIRECTION BY LIZZIE GARDINER WITH MARGARET HOPE PRODUCTION CHARLOTTE COOPER AND TEAM FOREIGN RIGHTS JULIETTE CLARK AND TEAM SALES JAS FYFE, DAN DOWNHAM AND TEAM PUBLISHER ALI DOUGAL AGENT CLAIRE WILSON WITH MIRIAM TOBIN AT RCW SPECIAL THANKS TO CHARLOTTE KNIGHT
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Egmont UK Limited
2 Minster Court, 10th floor, London EC3R 7BB
Text and illustrations copyright © 2020 Jack Noel
The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted
First e-book edition 2020
ISBN 978 1 4052 9404 1
Ebook ISBN 978 1 4052 9405 8
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
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 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 ideas regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones.
The shape of the letters on my father’s tombstone gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair.
From my mother’s, I drew a childish conclusion that she was freckled and sickly.
AND SO MY STORY BEGINS
It was a memorable raw afternoon towards evening.
This bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard;
where
PHILIP PIRRIP,
late of this parish,
and also
GEORGIANA
wife of the above,
were dead
and buried.
The dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes.
The low leaden line beyond was the river;
and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea.
And the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was PIP.
A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.
“Tell us your name!” said the man. “QUICK!”
“Pip, sir.”
“Once