British Library: Dickens's Great Expectations: Social Mobility

This instructional activity will explore this theme of social mobility through a reading of extracts from Samuel Smiles's Self-Help (1859), the handbook that many young men in 19th-century Britain turned to in seeking advice as to how to better themselves. Students will look at these extracts alongside key moments in Pip's life, and will also consider why Charles Dickens was so concerned with the theme of social mobility, drawing on what they know of the author's early experiences.