Author's abstract: Rewriting Dickens's Great Expectations through Jack Maggs, Carey revisits the English literary heritage and the values of nineteenth-century England. This paper examines how Carey reconsiders that tradition and, from his postcolonial position, questions Britain's cultural and social heritage to present Australia as a new haven offering redemption and regeneration, the possibility of overcoming the haunting heritage of one's origins and past, which allegorically refers to the former colony itself (63).