Abel Magwitch Abel Magwitch Abel Magwitch is a fictional character from Charles Dickens's 1861 novel, "Great Expectations". Charles Dickens set his story in about 1800, setting his character Abel Magwitch to meet a man called Compeyson at the Epsom Races. Compeyson, Dickens wrote, had been brought up in a boarding school and was an attractive, charming gentleman. Magwitch, at the same time, began a relationship with a mentally unstable woman named Molly, who later stood trial for murder. Jaggers, her defense attorney, convinced the jury that she was too weak to have strangled the woman. Molly was acquitted and became (unknown to
Charles Dickens Jr. Handbook". The book was then updated and reprinted every year until the author's death, from 1880 to the final 1896 edition. His dictionaries had been picked up in 1882 by Macmillan & Co. who printed them until 1889, after which it was again published by Dickens and Evans through J. Smith. Charles Dickens Jr. Charles Culliford Boz Dickens (6 January 1837 – 20 July 1896) was the first child of the English novelist Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine. A failed businessman, he became the editor of his father's magazine "All the Year Round", and a successful writer of dictionaries.