The Location of Childhood: \u27Great Expectations\u27 in Post-Colonial London

Peter Carey\u27s jack Maggs (1997) is a novel about the creation of the self. In its \u27writing back\u27 to Dickens\u27s Great Expectations (1861), it takes up the central themes of that novel: the exploitation of childhood and the child\u27s struggle to find his own identity. At the same time, it constitutes a distinctly post-colonial account of the creation of Australia, as the child- figure becomes a representation of the new world. Inspired by Edward Said\u27s reading of Great Expectations in Culture and Imperialism,1 Carey adopts the generic conventions of the 1860s sensation novel (the genre, of course, of Great Expectations), and extends these, as well, to encompass the post-colonial concerns of Australia