'This article looks at rewritings of a well-made Victorian multiplot novel completed in 1862, Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, to explore the dynamic between precursor and latecomer in terms of narrative operation. I am particularly interested in the remembering and reinterpreation of the literary canon, in acts of generative citation that bring the (Eurocentric) literary past to recurring life. The first section looks briefly at Kathy Acker's and Sue Roe's extrapolations of the classic and at Alfonso Curaron's 1998 film. The second section is a reading of Peter Carey's brilliant Dickensian pastiche Jack Maggs.' (p.109)