Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is an early exploration of ‘romance fraud’

By Emma Linford, Honorary research associate, English literature, University of Hull

Shrinking into her yellowing wedding gown with the decay of her wedding breakfast around her, Miss Havisham, from Charles Dickens’s 1861 novel, Great Expectations, is one of the best-known characters in English literature.

Jilted on her wedding day by her unscrupulous fiancé, Havisham can be understood by modern readers as a victim of “romance fraud”, where in a fraudster manipulates someone under the guise of courtship for their own financial…

Read complete article

~	Tanzania: Release Commission of Inquiry report into election-related killings to kickstart accountability process

~	Meta and Microsoft have joined the tech layoff tsunami – but is AI really to blame?

~	Why Italy’s Giorgia Meloni broke with Donald Trump

~	Could warming seas bring great white sharks back to the North Sea? A 5-million-year-old shark tooth may provide clues

~	The many literary lives of Mary Wollstonecraft – author of novels, travel writing and children’s books

~	Why delaying climate action now means higher seas by 2100 – new research

~	Landmark privacy determination puts rent tech platforms on notice. But renters remain vulnerable

~	NDIS eligibility will be based on ‘functional capacity’, not diagnostic labels. But what does that mean?

~	Australian farmers are battling another potential mouse plague – what is causing it?

~	Chernobyl’s exclusion zone is a beacon of biodiversity – but it faces new threats from Russia’s invasion