1877

1877 marks the beginning of the earlier events Pip recounts, linking his and Arthur’s first major assignment at J.W. Wells & Co. to a struggle over the firm’s leadership. The year is introduced in a retrospective, conversational narration that briefly turns toward the reader before returning to the firm’s past.

The Year in Pip’s Account

Pip first calls the year “seventy-seven,” then clarifies that he means eighteen seventy-seven and asks what year it is where the listener comes from. This moment establishes 1877 as the date from which his account proceeds, while making the act of telling feel like a conversation across an uncertain gap in time.

The Clerks and Their Assignment

In 1877, Pip and Arthur are young clerks who have just completed their indentures at the well-respected City firm of sorcerers, J.W. Wells & Co. On a Monday morning, senior partner John Wells summons them to his office and asks them to look after something. His air of mystery is familiar to the clerks, who have already spent two years with the firm, but the matter he reveals is more alarming than his usual secrecy.

The Conflict Revealed

John Wells tells the two clerks that his nephew, Humphrey Wells, is plotting with two other partners to remove him. Humphrey has grown tired of waiting for John to retire, despite John having talked of giving up for two hundred years. John, however, has no intention of leaving the business in his nephew’s hands. Pip presents this conflict as the opening circumstance of the story he is recounting: the date introduces not merely the clerks’ employment, but their involvement in a longstanding and ethically charged struggle within the firm.