Great Expectations firstly that of "foster parents", Miss Havisham, Magwitch, and Joe, and secondly that of "young people", Estella, Pip and Biddy. There is a further organizing element that can be labelled "Dangerous Lovers", which includes Compeyson, Bentley Drummle and Orlick. Pip is the centre of this web of love, rejection and hatred. Dickens contrasts this "dangerous love" with the relationship of Biddy and Joe, which grows from friendship to marriage. This is "the general frame of the novel". The term "love" is generic, applying it to both Pip's true love for Estella and the feelings Estella has for Drummle, which are
Letters of Charles Dickens burned those letters that had been sent to him in a mass bonfire in 1860, commenting, "Would to God that every letter I had ever written was on that pile". He burned more in 1869, the year before he died. As a result, hardly more than 250 letters to Dickens have survived to the present day. The reading public's first chance to study large numbers of Dickens letters came shortly after his death with the publication of "The Life of Charles Dickens" (1872–74) by his lifelong friend John Forster. Many of Dickens's letters to Forster were included, but they were