Abel Magwitch him and decided to do something for the boy, in part because he reminded him of his lost daughter, who would have been about the same age as Pip. Magwitch sent money to Mr. Jaggers, who passed it to Pip and sought to make the boy a gentleman. Jaggers is not permitted to let Pip know who his benefactor is, unless Magwitch chooses to reveal himself as the benefactor to Pip. Dickens continues his tale in about 1829, when Pip is 23 years old, Magwitch secretly returns to England under the name of "Provis". When he reveals himself to Pip,
Letters of Charles Dickens burned those letters that had been sent to him in a mass bonfire in 1860, commenting, "Would to God that every letter I had ever written was on that pile". He burned more in 1869, the year before he died. As a result, hardly more than 250 letters to Dickens have survived to the present day. The reading public's first chance to study large numbers of Dickens letters came shortly after his death with the publication of "The Life of Charles Dickens" (1872–74) by his lifelong friend John Forster. Many of Dickens's letters to Forster were included, but they were