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
Richard Bentley (publisher) Richard Bentley (publisher) Richard Bentley (24 October 1794 – 10 September 1871) was a 19th-century English publisher born into a publishing family. He started a firm with his brother in 1819. Ten years later, he went into partnership with the publisher Henry Colburn. Although the business was often successful, publishing the famous "Standard Novels" series, they ended their partnership in acrimony three years later. Bentley continued alone profitably in the 1830s and early 1840s, establishing the well-known periodical "Bentley's Miscellany". However, the periodical went into decline after its editor, Charles Dickens, left. Bentley's business started to falter after 1843 and