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                            Introduction
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'David Copperfield' is a novel by English author Charles Dickens,
narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures
in his journey from infancy to maturity. As such, it is typically
categorized in the bildungsroman genre. It was published as a serial
in 1849 and 1850 and then as a book in 1850.

'David Copperfield' is also a partially autobiographical novel: "a
very complicated weaving of truth and invention", with events
following Dickens's own life. Of the books he wrote, it was his
favourite. Called "the triumph of the art of Dickens", it marks a
turning point in his work, separating the novels of youth and those of
maturity.

At first glance, the work is modelled on 18th-century "personal
histories" that were very popular, like Henry Fielding's 'Joseph
Andrews' or 'Tom Jones', but 'David Copperfield' is a more carefully
structured work. It begins, like other novels by Dickens, with a bleak
picture of childhood in Victorian England, followed by young
Copperfield's slow social ascent, as he painfully provides for his
aunt, while continuing his studies.

Dickens wrote without an outline, unlike his previous novel, 'Dombey
and Son'. Some aspects of the story were fixed in his mind from the
start, but others were undecided until the serial publications were
underway. The novel has a primary theme of growth and change, but
Dickens also satirises many aspects of Victorian life. These include
the plight of prostitutes, the status of women in marriage, class
structure, the criminal justice system, the quality of schools, and
the employment of children in factories.


                            Plot summary
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The story follows the life of David Copperfield from childhood to
maturity. David was born in Blunderstone, Suffolk, England, six months
after the death of his father. David spends his early years residing
in a small house called the Rookery. His loving and childish mother
and their kindly housekeeper, Clara Peggotty, bring him up here, where
they call him Davy. When he is seven years old, his mother marries
Edward Murdstone without having told him they plan to marry. To get
him out of the way, David is sent to visit Peggotty's family in
Yarmouth. Her brother, fisherman Mr Peggotty, lives in a beached
barge, with his adopted niece and nephew Emily and Ham, and an elderly
widow, Mrs Gummidge. "Little Em'ly" is somewhat spoiled by her fond
foster father, and David is in love with her. They call him Master
Copperfield.

On his return, David discovers his mother has married and is
immediately given good reason to dislike his stepfather, Murdstone,
who believes exclusively in stern, harsh methods of parenting, calling
it "firmness". David has similar feelings for Murdstone's sister Jane,
who moves into the house soon afterwards. Between them, they tyrannise
David and his poor mother, making their lives miserable. When David
falls behind in his studies, Murdstone thrashes him, and David bites
his hand; in consequence, he is sent away to Salem House, a boarding
school, under a ruthless headmaster named Mr Creakle. There he is
befriended by an older boy, James Steerforth, and Tommy Traddles. He
develops an impassioned admiration for Steerforth, perceiving him as
someone noble, who could do great things if he would, and one who pays
attention to him.

David goes home for the holidays to learn that his mother has given
birth to a baby boy. Shortly after David returns to Salem House, his
mother and her baby die, and David returns home immediately. Peggotty
marries the local carrier, Mr Barkis. Murdstone sends David to work
for a wine merchant in London - a business of which Murdstone is a
joint owner. After some months, David's friendly but spendthrift
landlord, Wilkins Micawber, is arrested for debt and sent to the
King's Bench Prison, and the rest of Mr. Micawber's family soon moves
to the Prison too.  David visits the Micawbers regularly at the
Prison, and boards nearby.  When Micawber's release is imminent, the
Micawbers decide they will soon move to Plymouth.  David realises that
will leave him alone in London, where no one cares about him.  He
makes up his mind to run away to Dover to find his only known
remaining relative, his eccentric and kind-hearted great-aunt Betsey
Trotwood.  She had come to Blunderstone at his birth, only to depart
in ire upon learning that he was not a girl. However, she takes it
upon herself to raise David, despite Murdstone's attempt to regain
custody of him. She encourages him to 'be as like his sister, 'Betsey
Trotwood' as he can be - that is, to meet the expectations she had for
the girl who was never born. David's great-aunt renames him "Trotwood
Copperfield" and addresses him as "Trot", one of several names others
call David in the novel.

David's aunt sends him to a better school than the last he attended.
It is run by kind Dr. Strong, whose methods inculcate honour and
self-reliance in his pupils. During term, David lodges with the lawyer
Mr Wickfield and his daughter Agnes, who becomes David's friend and
confidante. Wickfield's clerk, Uriah Heep, also lives at the house.

By devious means, Uriah Heep gradually gains a complete ascendancy
over the aging and alcoholic Wickfield, to Agnes's great sorrow. Heep,
as he maliciously confides to David, aspires to marry Agnes.
Ultimately with the aid of Micawber, who has been employed by Heep as
a secretary, his fraudulent behaviour is revealed. (At the end of the
book, David encounters him in prison, convicted of attempting to
defraud the Bank of England.)

After completing school, David apprentices to be a proctor. During
this time, due to Heep's fraudulent activities, his aunt's fortune has
diminished. David toils to make a living. He works mornings and
evenings for his former teacher Dr Strong as a secretary, and also
starts to learn shorthand, with the help of his old school-friend
Traddles, upon completion reporting parliamentary debate for a
newspaper. With considerable moral support from Agnes and his own
great diligence and hard work, David ultimately finds fame and fortune
as an author, writing fiction.

David's romantic but self-serving school friend, Steerforth, also
re-acquainted with David, goes on to seduce and dishonour Emily,
offering to marry her off to his manservant Littimer before deserting
her in Europe. Her uncle Mr Peggotty manages to find her with the help
of Martha, who had grown up in their part of England and then settled
in London. Ham, who had been engaged to marry Emily before the
tragedy, dies in a fierce storm off the coast while rescuing shipwreck
victims. Steerforth was aboard the ship and also dies. Mr Peggotty
takes Emily to a new life in Australia, accompanied by Mrs Gummidge
and the Micawbers, where all eventually find security and happiness.

Meanwhile, David has fallen in love with Dora Spenlow, and marries
her. Their marriage proves troublesome for David in the sense of
everyday practical affairs, but he never stops loving her. Dora dies
early in their marriage after a miscarriage. After Dora's death, Agnes
encourages David to return to normal life and his profession of
writing. While living in Switzerland to dispel his grief over so many
losses, David realises that he loves Agnes. Upon returning to Britain,
after a failed attempt to conceal his feelings, David finds that Agnes
loves him too. They quickly marry, and in this marriage he finds true
happiness. David and Agnes then have at least five children, including
a daughter named after his great-aunt, Betsey Trotwood.


                             Characters
======================================================================
*David Copperfield - The narrator and protagonist of the novel.
David's father, David Sr, dies six months before he is born, and he is
raised by his mother and nursemaid Peggotty until his mother
remarries. David's stepfather, Mr Murdstone, sends David away to a
boarding school. While attending school, David learns his mother has
died, on his ninth birthday. He is sent to work at a factory until he
runs away to find his aunt. David Copperfield is characterised in the
book as trusting, goal-oriented, but as yet immature. He marries Dora
Spenlow and later Agnes Wickfield.
*Clara Copperfield - David's affectionate and beautiful mother,
described as being innocently childish. She is married to David
Copperfield Sr until his death, and gives birth six months later to
the central character of the novel. She loves and coddles young David
with the help of Peggotty. Years later she remarries Mr Murdstone. She
dies a couple of months after the birth of her second son, who dies a
day or so later, while David is away at Salem House boarding school.
*Clara Peggotty - The faithful servant of the Copperfield family and a
lifelong companion to David - she is called by her surname Peggotty
within David's family, as her given name is Clara, the same as David's
mother; she is also referred to at times as Barkis after her marriage
to Mr Barkis. After her husband's death, Peggotty helps to put in
order David's rooms in London and then returns to Yarmouth to keep
house for her nephew, Ham Peggotty. Following Ham's death, she keeps
house for David's great-aunt, Betsey Trotwood.
*Betsey Trotwood - David's eccentric and temperamental yet
kind-hearted great-aunt; she becomes his guardian after he runs away
from the Murdstone and Grinby warehouse in Blackfriars, London. She is
present on the night of David's birth but leaves after hearing that
Clara Copperfield's child is a boy instead of a girl, and is not seen
again until David flees to her house in Dover from London. She is
portrayed as affectionate towards David, and defends him and his late
mother when Mr Murdstone arrives to take custody of David: she
confronts the man and rebukes him for his abuse of David and his
mother, then threatens him and drives him off the premises.
Universally believed to be a widow, she conceals the existence of her
ne'er-do-well husband who occasionally bleeds her for money.
*Dr Edward Chillip - A shy doctor who assists at David's birth and
faces the wrath and anger of Betsey Trotwood after he informs her that
Clara's baby is a boy instead of the girl Betsey wanted. David meets
this doctor each time he returns to the neighbourhood of his birth. Mr
Chillip, met in London when David Copperfield returns from
Switzerland, tells David of the fate of Murdstone's second wife, which
is much the same as the fate of David's mother.
*Mr Barkis - An aloof carter who declares his intention to marry
Peggotty after eating her handmade pastries. He says to David: "Tell
her, 'Barkis is willin'!' Just so." Peggotty marries him after Clara
Copperfield's death. He is a miser, keeping an unexpected amount of
wealth in a plain box labelled "Old Clothes". He bequeaths two-thirds
of his money to his wife from his savings of £3,000 (about £ in
present-day value (2022)) when he dies after about ten years of
marriage. He leaves annuities for Mr Daniel Peggotty, Little Emily,
and David from the rest.
*Edward Murdstone - The main antagonist of the first half of the
novel, he is Young David's cruel stepfather who beats him for falling
behind in his studies and emotionally torments Clara. David reacts by
biting Mr Murdstone, and is sent to Salem House - a private school
owned by Mr Murdstone's friend Mr Creakle - in retribution. After
David's mother dies, he sends David to work at his factory in London.
He appears at Betsey Trotwood's Dover house after David runs away. Mr
Murdstone appears to show signs of repentance when confronted by
Copperfield's aunt about his treatment of Clara and David, but when
David works at Doctors' Commons years later, he meets Murdstone taking
out a marriage licence for his next young and trusting wife.
*Jane Murdstone - Mr Murdstone's equally cruel spinster sister, who
moves into the Copperfield house shortly after Mr Murdstone marries
Clara Copperfield, taking over the housekeeping. Much like her brother
she is domineering, mean-spirited, and petty. She is the "Confidential
Friend" of David's first wife, Dora Spenlow, and is the one who found
David's letters to Dora, and creates the scene between David
Copperfield and Dora's father, Mr Spenlow. Later, she rejoins her
brother and his second wife in a marriage much like the one with
David's mother.
*Daniel Peggotty - Peggotty's brother; a humble but generous Yarmouth
fisherman who takes his nephew Ham and niece Emily into his custody
after each of them has been orphaned. He welcomes David as a child
when holidaying in Yarmouth with Peggotty. When Emily is older and
runs away with David's friend Steerforth, he travels around the world
in search of her. He eventually finds her as a prostitute in London,
and after that, they emigrate to Australia.
*Emily (Little Em'ly) - The niece of Daniel Peggotty and his sister
Clara Peggotty. She is a childhood friend of David Copperfield, who
loved her in his childhood days. She abandons Ham, her cousin and
fiancé, on the eve of their wedding, disappearing abroad with
Steerforth for several years. Broken by Steerforth's desertion, she
does not go back home, but she does eventually go to London. With the
help of Martha, her uncle recovers her from the brink of prostitution,
after Rosa Dartle rants at her. She accompanies her uncle to
Australia.
*Ham Peggotty - The good-natured nephew of Mr Peggotty who is tall and
strong, and becomes a skilled boat builder. He is the fiancé of Emily
before she leaves him for Steerforth. His aunt, (Clara) Peggotty,
looks after Ham once Emily is gone. When a fierce storm at sea off
Yarmouth demasts a merchant ship from the south, Ham attempts to
rescue the crew, but is drowned by the ferocity of the waves before he
can reach anyone. News of his death, a day before Emily and Mr
Peggotty's emigration, is withheld from his family to enable them to
leave without hesitation or remorse.
*Mrs Gummidge - The widow of Daniel Peggotty's partner, who is taken
in and supported by Daniel after his partner's death. She is a
self-described "lone, lorn creetur" who spends much of her time pining
for "the old 'un" (her late husband). After Emily runs away with
Steerforth, she renounces her self-pity and becomes Daniel and Ham's
primary caretaker. She too emigrates to Australia with Daniel and
Emily. In Australia, when she receives a marriage proposal, she
responds by attacking the unlucky suitor with a bucket.
*Martha Endell - A young woman, once Little Emily's friend, who flees
to London after an unspecified disgrace. She falls into prostitution
and is stopped from suicide by Daniel Peggotty and David, resolving to
help them recover Emily. She emigrates with the Peggotty family to
Australia, where she marries an outback farmer.
*Mr Creakle - The harsh headmaster of young David's boarding school,
Salem House, who is assisted by the one-legged Tungay. Mr Creakle is a
friend of Mr Murdstone. He singles out David for extra torment at
Murdstone's request, but later treats him normally after David
apologises to Murdstone. With a surprising amount of delicacy,
Creakle's wife breaks the news to David that his mother has died.
Later, he becomes a Middlesex magistrate and is considered
'enlightened' for his day. He runs his prison by the 'system' and is
portrayed with great sarcasm, as he thinks that his model inmates,
Heep and Littimer, have changed their criminal ways because of his
intervention.
*James Steerforth - A student at Creakle's school who befriends young
David, even as he takes over David's money. He is condescending to
other social classes, a snob who unhesitatingly takes advantage of his
younger friends and uses his mother's influence, going so far as to
get Mr Mell dismissed from the school because Mell's mother lives in
an almshouse. Although he grows into a charming and handsome young
man, he proves to be lacking in character when he seduces and later
abandons Little Em'ly. He eventually drowns at Yarmouth in a fierce
storm at sea, washing up on the shore after the merchant ship breaks
apart.
*Tommy Traddles - David's friend from Salem House. Traddles is one of
the few boys who does not trust Steerforth and is notable for drawing
skeletons on his slate. (David speculates that this is to cheer
himself up with the macabre thought that his predicaments are only
temporary.) He and David meet again later and become lifelong friends.
Traddles works hard but faces great obstacles because of his lack of
money and connections. He succeeds in making a name and a career for
himself, becoming a Judge and marrying his true love, Sophy.
*Wilkins Micawber - A melodramatic, kind-hearted gentleman who has a
way with words and eternal optimism. He befriends David as a young boy
in London, taking him as a lodger. Micawber suffers from financial
difficulty and spends time in a debtors' prison before moving his
family briefly to Plymouth. Micawber meets David again, passing by the
Heep household in Canterbury when David is taking tea there. Micawber
takes a position at Wickfield and Heep. Thinking Micawber is
weak-minded, Heep makes him an accomplice in several of his schemes,
but Micawber turns the tables on his employer and is instrumental in
his downfall. Micawber emigrates to Australia, where he enjoys a
successful career as a sheep farmer and becomes a magistrate. He is
based on Dickens's father, John Dickens, who faced similar financial
problems when Dickens was a child, but never emigrated.
*Emma Micawber - Wilkins Micawber's wife and the mother of their five
children. She comes from a wealthy family who disapprove of her
husband, but she constantly protests that she will "never leave
Micawber!"
*Mr Dick (Richard Babley) - A slightly deranged, rather childish but
amiable man who lives with Betsey Trotwood; they are distant
relatives. His madness is amply described; he claims to have the
"trouble" of King Charles I in his head. He is fond of making gigantic
kites and tries to write a "Memorial" (that is, a Petition - though on
what subject is never revealed) but is unable to focus and finish it.
Despite his limitations, Dick is able to see issues with a certain
clarity. He proves to be not only a kind and loyal friend but also
demonstrates a keen emotional intelligence, particularly when he helps
Dr and Mrs Strong through a marriage crisis.
*Mr Wickfield - The widowed father of Agnes Wickfield and lawyer to
Betsey Trotwood. While David attends school in Canterbury, he stays
with the Wickfields until he graduates. Mr Wickfield feels guilty
that, through his love, he has hurt his daughter by keeping her too
close to himself. This sense of guilt leads him to drink. His
apprentice Uriah Heep uses the information to lead Mr Wickfield down a
slippery slope, encouraging the alcoholism and feelings of guilt, and
eventually convincing him that he has committed improprieties while
inebriated, and blackmailing him. He is saved by Mr Micawber, and his
friends consider him to have become a better man through the
experience.
*Agnes Wickfield - Mr Wickfield's mature and lovely daughter and close
friend of David since he began school at Dr Strong's in Canterbury.
Agnes nurtures an unrequited love for David for many years but never
tells him, helping and advising him through his infatuation with, and
marriage to Dora. After David returns to England, he realises his
feelings for her, and she becomes David's second wife and mother of
their children.
*Uriah Heep - The main antagonist of the novel's second half, Heep
serves first as clerk from age 11 or 12; at age 15 he meets
Copperfield and a few years later becomes partner to Mr Wickfield. He
presents himself as self-deprecating and talks of being "umble", but
gradually reveals his wicked and twisted character. He gains power
over Wickfield but is exposed by Wilkins Micawber and Traddles, who
have gathered evidence that Uriah committed many acts of fraud. By
forging Mr Wickfield's signature, he misappropriates the personal
wealth of the Wickfield family, together with portfolios entrusted to
them by others, including funds belonging to Betsey Trotwood. He fools
Wickfield into thinking he has himself committed this act while drunk,
and then blackmails him. Heep is defeated but not prosecuted. He is
later imprisoned for a separate fraud on the Bank of England. He
nurtures a deep hatred of David Copperfield and of many others, though
in some ways he is a mirror to David, wanting to get ahead and to
marry the boss's daughter.
*Mrs Heep - Uriah's mother, who is as sycophantic as her son. She has
instilled in him his lifelong tactic of pretending to be subservient
to achieve his goals, and even as his schemes fall apart she begs him
to save himself by "being 'umble".
*Dr Strong and Annie Strong - Director and assistant of the school
David attends in Canterbury. Dr Strong's main concern is to work on
his dictionary, where, at the end of the novel, he has reached the
letter D. The Doctor is 62 when David meets him, and married about a
year to Annie, considerably younger than her husband. In this happy
loving couple, each one cares more about the other than about
themselves. The depth of their feeling allows them to defeat the
efforts of Uriah Heep in trying to break their union.
*Jack Maldon - A cousin and childhood sweetheart of Annie Strong. He
continues to bear affection for her and assumes she will leave Dr
Strong for him. Instead, Dr Strong helps him financially and in
finding a position. Maldon is charming, and after his time in India,
he ends up in London society, in a social circle with Julia Mills.
They live a life that seems empty to the adult David Copperfield.
*Julia Mills - She is a friend of Dora who supports Dora's romance
with David Copperfield; she moves to India when her father gets a new
position. She marries a wealthy Scottish man, a "Scotch Croesus", and
lives in London in the end. She thinks of little besides money.
*Mrs Markleham - Annie's mother, nicknamed "The Old Soldier" by her
husband's students for her stubbornness. She tries to take pecuniary
advantage of her son-in-law Dr Strong in every way possible, to
Annie's sorrow.
*Mrs Emma Steerforth - The wealthy widowed mother of James Steerforth.
She dotes on her son to the point of being completely blind to his
faults. When Steerforth disgraces his family and the Peggottys by
running off with Em'ly, Mrs Steerforth blames Em'ly for corrupting her
son, rather than accept that James has disgraced an innocent girl. The
news of her son's death destroys her. She lives on, but she never
recovers from the shock.
*Rosa Dartle - Steerforth's cousin, a bitter, sarcastic spinster who
lives with Mrs Steerforth. She is secretly in love with Steerforth and
blames others such as Emily and Steerforth's mother for corrupting
him. She is described as being thin and displays a visible scar on her
lip caused by Steerforth in one of his violent rages as a child.
*Francis Spenlow - A lawyer, employer of David as a proctor and the
father of Dora Spenlow. He dies suddenly of a heart attack while
driving his phaeton home. After his death, it is revealed that he is
heavily in debt, and left no will.
*Dora Spenlow - The adorable daughter of Mr Spenlow who becomes
David's first wife after a long courtship. She is described as being
impractical and has many similarities to David's mother. In their
first year of marriage, David learns their differences as to keeping a
house in order. Dora does not learn firmness, but remains herself,
affectionate with David and attached to her lapdog, Jip. She is not
unaware of their differences, and asks David, whom she calls "Doady",
to think of her as a "child-wife". She suffers a miscarriage, which
begins a long illness from which she dies with David's childhood
friend and later second wife Agnes Wickfield at her side.
*Littimer - Steerforth's obsequious valet (repeatedly described as
being "respectable"), who is instrumental in aiding his seduction of
Emily. Littimer is always polite and correct but his condescending
manner intimidates David, who always feels as if Littimer is reminding
him how young he is. He later winds up in prison for embezzlement, and
his manners allow him to con his way to the stature of Model Prisoner
in Creakle's establishment.
*Miss Mowcher - a dwarf and Steerforth's hairdresser. Though she
participates in Steerforth's circle as a witty and glib gossip, she is
strong against the discomfort others might feel associated with her
dwarfism. She is later instrumental in Littimer's arrest.
*Mr Mell - A poor teacher at Salem House. He takes David to Salem
House and is the only adult there who is kind to him. His mother lives
in a workhouse, and Mell supports her with his wages. When Steerforth
discovers this information from David, he uses it to get Creakle to
fire Mell. Near the end of the novel, Copperfield discovers in an
Australian newspaper that Mell has emigrated and is now Doctor Mell of
Colonial Salem-House Grammar School, Port Middlebay, married with
children.
*Sophy Crewler - One of a family of ten daughters, Sophy runs the
household and takes care of all her sisters. She and Traddles are
engaged to be married, but her family has made Sophy so indispensable
that they do not want her to part from them with Traddles. The pair do
eventually marry and settle down happily, and Sophy proves to be an
invaluable aid in Traddles's legal career, while still helping her
sisters.
*Mr Sharp - The chief teacher of Salem House, he has more authority
than Mr Mell. He looks weak, both in health and character; his head
seems to be very heavy for him; he walks on one side, and has a big
nose.
*Mr Jorkins - The rarely seen partner of Mr Spenlow. Spenlow uses him
as a scapegoat for any unpopular decision he chooses to make, painting
Jorkins as an inflexible tyrant, but Jorkins is, in fact, a meek and
timid nonentity who, when confronted, takes the same track by blaming
his inability to act on Mr Spenlow.


Fragments of autobiography
============================
Between 1845 and 1848, Dickens wrote fragments of autobiography,
excerpts of which he showed to his wife and John Forster. Then in 1855
he made an attempt at revising it. This was a failure because, as he
tells his first love Maria Beadnell (now Mrs Winter), when he began
dealing with his youthful love for her, "I lost courage and burned the
rest". Paul Schlicke points out that in fact not all the pages have
gone through the flames and that, as Dickens began writing 'David
Copperfield' some pages were unearthed. Proof of this is found in the
eleventh chapter of the novel: "I begin Life on my own Account and
don't like it", where the story of Dickens's experience at the Warren
Shoe Factory is told almost verbatim, with the only change, "Mr
Micawber" instead of "my father". John Forster also published
substantial extracts relating to this period in Dickens's biography,
including a paragraph devoted to Wellington House College, which
corresponds with the second stage of childhood recounted in the novel.
Thus Dickens looks back on his painful past, already evoked by the
martyrdom of Little Paul in 'Dombey and Son', though voiced by an
omniscient narrator in that earlier novel. Until Forster published his
biography of Dickens in 1872-1874, no one knew that Dickens had worked
in a factory as a child, not even his wife, until Dickens wrote it
down and gave the papers to Forster in 1847. The first generations of
readers did not know this part of David Copperfield's story began like
an incident in the author's life.


The autobiographical dimension
================================
If 'David Copperfield' has come to be Dickens's "darling", it is
because it is the most autobiographical of all his novels. Some of the
most painful episodes of his life are barely disguised; others appear
indirectly, termed "oblique revelations" by Paul Davis. However,
Dickens himself wrote to Forster that the book is not a pure
autobiography, but "a very complicated weaving of truth and
invention".


The autobiographical material
===============================
The most important autobiographical material concerns the months that
Dickens, still a child, spent at the Warren factory, his diligence
with his first love, Maria Beadnell (see Catherine Dickens and Ellen
Ternan), and finally his career as a journalist and writer. As pointed
out by his biographer and friend John Forster, these episodes are
essentially factual: the description of forced labour to which David
is subjected at Murdstone and Grinby reproduces verbatim the
autobiographical fragments entrusted to his friend; David's
fascination with Dora Spenlow is similar to that inspired by the
capricious Maria; the major stages of his career, from his
apprenticeship at Doctors' Commons to writing his first novel, via the
shorthand reporting of parliamentary procedures, also follow those of
its creator.

However, this material, like the other autobiographical aspects of the
novel, is not systematically reproduced as such. The cruel Mr
Murdstone is very different from the real James Lamert, cousin to
Dickens, being the stepson of Mrs Dickens's mother's sister, who lived
with the family in Chatham and Camden Town, and who had found for the
young Charles the place of tagger in the shoe factory he managed for
his brother-in-law George. The end of this episode looks nothing like
what happens in the novel; in reality, contrary to the desire of his
mother that he continue to work, it is his father who took him out of
the warehouse to send him to school. Contrary to Charles's frustrated
love for Maria Beadnell, who pushed him back in front of his parents'
opposition, David, in the novel, marries Dora Spenlow and, with
satisfaction 'ex post facto', writes Paul Davis, virtually "kills" the
recalcitrant stepfather. Finally, David's literary career seems less
agitated than that of Dickens, and his results are much less
spectacular. David's natural modesty alone does not explain all these
changes; Paul Davis expresses the opinion that Dickens recounts his
life as he would have liked it, and along with "conscious artistry",
Dickens knows how to borrow data, integrate them to his original
purpose and transform them according to the novelistic necessities, so
that "In the end, Copperfield is David's autobiography, not
Dickens's".


Dickens's past
================
'David Copperfield' is the contemporary of two major memory-based
works, William Wordsworth's 'The Prelude' (1850), an autobiographical
poem about the formative experiences of his youth and Tennyson's 'In
Memoriam' (1850) which eulogises the memory of his friend, Arthur
Hallam. There is Wordsworth's romantic questioning on the personal
development of the individual and there is Tennyson's Victorian
confrontation with change and doubt. According to Andrew Sanders,
'David Copperfield' reflects both types of response, which give this
novel the privileged position of representing the hinge of the
century.

The memories of Dickens are, according to Paul Schlicke, remarkably
transmuted into fiction. The experience Dickens lived, as the son of a
brazen impenitent, is celebrated through the comic figure of Wilkins
Micawber. Dickens's youthful passion for Maria Beadnell resurfaces
with tenderness, in the form of David's impractical marriage with Dora
Spenlow. Dickens's decision to make David a novelist emphasises how he
used this book to re-invent himself as a man and artist, "The world
would not take another Pickwick from me, but we can be cheerful and
merry, and with a little more purpose in us". If the preoccupation
with the adventures of a hero, associated with a parade of comic or
grotesque characters, looks back to Dickens's earlier novels, the
interest in personal development, the pessimistic atmosphere and the
complex structure of 'Copperfield' foreshadow other novels.

Despite never living there, Dickens knew the City of Canterbury well
and includes numerous references to it. David Copperfield regularly
visits the cathedral services at Canterbury Cathedral, and Mr Micawber
wants his son to become a chorister. The Guildhall is mentioned when
David Copperfield is asked by the barrister to visit. Dr Strong and
Annie Markleham get married at St Alphege church, which is also
situated prominently in Canterbury.


Contemporaneous novels
========================
In 1847, 'Jane Eyre', Charlotte Brontë's first-person narrative, was
acclaimed as soon as it was published. Unlike Thackeray, who adored
it, Dickens claims years later never to have read it. True or false,
he had encountered Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Mary Barton', a novel that
called for understanding and sympathy in a class-eaten society.
Thackeray's 'Pendennis' was serialised at the same time as 'David
Copperfield' and it depicts its hero's personal and social journey
from the countryside to the city. A rivalry existed between the two
writers, though it preoccupied Thackeray more than Dickens. The most
direct literary influence is "obviously Carlyle" who, in a lecture
given in 1840, the year of his meeting with Dickens, on "On Heroes,
Hero-Worship" and "the Heroic in History", claims that the most
important modern character is "the hero as a man of letters". This is
David's destiny, through experience, perseverance and seriousness.


First inspirations
====================
On 7 January 1849, Dickens visited Norwich and Yarmouth in Norfolk,
with two close friends, John Leech (1817-1864) and Mark Lemon
(1809-1870). Leech was an illustrator at 'Punch', a satirical
magazine, and the first illustrator for 'A Christmas Carol' by Dickens
in 1843. Lemon was a founding editor of 'Punch', and soon a
contributor to 'Household Words', the weekly magazine Dickens was
starting up; he co-authored 'Mr Nightingale's Diary', a farce, with
Dickens in 1851. The two towns, especially the second, became
important in the novel, and Dickens informed Forster that Yarmouth
seemed to him to be "the strangest place in the world" and that he
would "certainly try my hand at it". During a walk in the vicinity of
Yarmouth, Dickens noticed a sign indicating the small locality of
Blundeston, which became in his novel the village of "Blunderstone"
where David is born and spends his childhood.

A week after his arrival in Yarmouth, his sixth son, Henry Fielding
Dickens, was named after Henry Fielding, his favourite past author.
Per Forster, Dickens refers to Fielding "as a kind of homage to the
novel he was about to write".

As always with Dickens, when a writing project began, he was agitated,
melancholic, "even deeper than the customary birth pangs of other
novels"; as always, he hesitated about the title, and his working
notes contain seventeen variants, "Charles Copperfield" included.
After several attempts, he stopped on "The Copperfield Survey of the
World as it Rolled", a title that he retained until 19 April. When
Forster pointed out that his hero, now called David, has his own
initials transposed, Dickens was intrigued and declared that this was
a manifestation of his fate. He was not yet sure of his pen: "Though I
know what I want to do, I am lumbering like a train wagon", he told
Forster.


No general plan, but an inspired novel
========================================
Contrary to the method previously used for 'Dombey and Son', Dickens
did not elaborate an overall plan and often wrote the summary of a
chapter after completing it. Four character names were found at the
last moment: Traddles, Barkis, Creakle and Steerforth; the profession
of David remains uncertain until the eighth issue (printed in December
1849, containing Chapters 22-24, in which David chooses to be trained
as a proctor); and Paul Schlicke notes that the future of Dora was
still not determined on 17 May 1850 (when 37 chapters had been
published in the first 12 monthly instalments). Other major aspects of
the novel, however, were immediately fixed, such as David's meeting
with Aunt Betsey, Emily's fall or Agnes's role as the "real" heroine
of the story.

Once launched, Dickens becomes "quite confident". The most difficult
thing was to insert "what I know so well", his experience at the
Warren factory; once the threads were woven, however, the truth mixed
with fiction, he exulted and congratulated himself in a letter to
Forster. From now on, he wrote in this letter, the story "bore him
irresistibly along". Never, it seems, was he in the grip of failures
of inspiration, so "ardent [is his] sympathy with the creatures of the
fancy which always made real to him their sufferings or sorrows."

Changes in detail occur during the composition: on 22 August 1849,
while staying on the Isle of Wight for a family vacation, he changed
on the advice of Forster, the theme of the obsession of Mr Dick, a
secondary character in the novel. This theme was originally "a bull in
a china shop" and became "King Charles's head" in a nod to the
bicentenary of the execution of Charles I of England.


Last incidents in the writing
===============================
Although plunged into the writing of his novel, Dickens set out to
create a new journal, 'Household Words', the first issue of which
appeared on 31 March 1850. This daunting task, however, did not seem
to slow down the writing of 'David Copperfield': I am "busy as a bee",
he writes happily to the actor William Macready.

A serious incident occurred in December: Mrs Jane Seymour Hill,
chiropractor to Mrs Dickens, raised the threat of prosecution, because
she recognised herself in the portrait of Miss Mowcher; Dickens did
not do badly, gradually modifying the psychology of the character by
making her less of a caricature and, at the very end of the novel, by
making her a friend of the protagonist, whereas at the beginning she
served rather contrary purposes. This was, writes Harry Stone, "the
only major departure from his original plans".

His third daughter was born on 16 August 1850, called Dora Annie
Dickens, the same name as his character's first wife. The baby died
nine months later after the last serial was issued and the book was
published.

Dickens marked the end of his manuscript on 21 October 1850 and felt
both torn and happy like every time he finished a novel: "Oh, my dear
Forster, if I were to say half of what 'Copperfield' makes me feel
to-night, how strangely, even to you, I should be turned inside out! I
seem to be sending some part of myself into the Shadowy World."

At first glance, the work is modelled in the loose and somewhat
disjointed way of "personal histories" that was very popular in the
United Kingdom of the 18th century; but in reality, 'David
Copperfield' is a carefully structured and unified novel. It begins,
like other novels by Dickens, with a rather bleak painting of the
conditions of childhood in Victorian England, notoriously when the
troublesome children are parked in infamous boarding schools, then he
strives to trace the slow social and intimate ascent of a young man
who, painfully providing for the needs of his good aunt while
continuing his studies, ends up becoming a writer: the story, writes
Paul Davis, of "a Victorian everyman seeking self-understanding".


Publication in monthly instalments
====================================
"The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observation of
David Copperfield the Younger, of Blunderstone Rookery" was published
from 1 May 1849 to 1 November 1850 in 19 monthly one-shilling
instalments, containing 32 pages of text and two illustrations by
Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"), with a title cover simplified to 'The
Personal History of David Copperfield'. The last instalment was a
double-number.

On the other side of the Atlantic, John Wiley & Sons and G. P.
Putnam published a monthly edition, then a two-volume book version.

* I - May 1849 (chapters 1-3);
* II - June 1849 (chapters 4-6);
* III - July 1849 (chapters 7-9);
* IV - August 1849 (chapters 10-12);
* V - September 1849 (chapters 13-15);
* VI - October 1849 (chapters 16-18);
* VII - November 1849 (chapters 19-21);
* VIII - December 1849 (chapters 22-24);
* IX - January 1850 (chapters 25-27);
* X - February 1850 (chapters 28-31);
* XI - March 1850 (chapters 32-34);
* XII - April 1850 (chapters 35-37);
* XIII - May 1850 (chapters 38-40);
* XIV - June 1850 (chapters 41-43);
* XV - July 1850 (chapters 44-46);
* XVI - August 1850 (chapters 47-50);
* XVII - September 1850 (chapters 51-53);
* XVIII - October 1850 (chapters 54-57);
* XIX-XX - November 1850 (chapters 58-64).


                           Point of view
======================================================================
Whatever the borrowings from Dickens's own life, the reader knows as
an essential precondition, that 'David Copperfield' is a novel and not
an autobiography; a work with fictional events and characters -
including the hero-narrator - who are creations of Dickens's
imagination.


First person narrator
=======================
The use of the first person determines the point of view: the narrator
Copperfield, is a recognised writer, married to Agnes for more than
ten years, who has decided to speak in public about his past life.
This recreation, in itself an important act, can only be partial and
also biased, since, 'a priori', Copperfield is the only viewpoint and
the only voice; not enjoying the prerogatives of the third person,
omnipotence, ubiquity, clairvoyance, he relates only what he witnessed
or participated in: all the characters appear in his presence or,
failing that, he learns through hearsay, before being subjected to his
pen through the prism of his conscience, deformed by the natural
deficit of his perception and accentuated by the selective filter of
memory. Story teller and teacher, Copperfield does not let the facts
speak for themselves, but constantly asserts himself as master of the
narrative game, and he intervenes, explains, interprets and comments.
His point of view is that of the adult he has become, as he expresses
himself just as he is writing. At the end of his book, he feels a
writer's pride to evoke "the thread[s] in the web I have spun".

Gareth Cordery writes that "if 'David Copperfield' is the paradigmatic
Bildungsroman, it is also the quintessential novel of memory" and as
such, according to Angus Wilson, the equal of Marcel Proust's 'In
Search of Lost Time' ('À la recherche du temps perdu'). The memory of
the hero engages so intensely with his memories that the past seems
present:

How well I recollect the kind of day it was! I smell the fog that
hung about the place; I see the hoar-frost, ghostly, through it; I
feel my rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim
perspective of the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and there
to light up the foggy morning, and the breath of the boys wreathing
and smoking in the raw cold as they blow upon their fingers, and rap
their feet upon the floor.

In such passages, which punctuate the retrospective chapters, the
relived moment replaces the lived, the historical present seals the
collapse of the original experience and the recreation of a here and
now that seizes the entire field of consciousness. Sometimes this
resurrected experience is more vivid than reality; so, in Chapter 41,
about Traddles's face, he says: "His honest face, he looked at me with
a serio-comic shake of his head impresses me more in the remembrance
than it did in the reality." These are "sacred moments", writes Gareth
Cordery, which Copperfield has carefully guarded in "the treasure
chambers" of his memory, where sings "the music of time": "secret
prose, that sense of a mind speaking to itself with no one there to
listen".


Commentary via the illustrations
==================================
Without being Dickens, this narrator, Copperfield, is very like him
and often becomes his spokesperson. It adds to his point of view,
directly or indirectly, that of the author, without there necessarily
being total match between the two. As such, Copperfield serves as
"medium", mirror and also screen, Dickens sometimes subverting his
speech to get to the forefront or, on the contrary, hide behind this
elegant delegate to the nimble pen. Dickens's voice, however, is in
general well concealed and, according to Gareth Cordery, the most
difficult to detect because mostly present by implication. To help
hear his voice, he adds, it is advisable to turn to Phiz, whose
illustrations bring a point of view which is not always in agreement
with that of Copperfield. For example, in chapter 21, the two friends
arrive by surprise at the Peggotty home, and Copperfield presents
Steerforth to Emily at the very moment when her betrothal with Ham has
just been announced. This sudden intrusion stops the girl as she has
just jumped from Ham's arms to nestle in those of Mr Peggotty, a sign,
says Cordery in passing, that the promise of marriage is as much for
the uncle as for the nephew. The text remains brief but Phiz
interprets, anticipates the events, denounces even the future guilt of
Copperfield: all eyes are on the girl, her bonnet, emblem of her
social aspirations and her next wanderings with Steerforth, is ready
to be seized. Copperfield, dressed as a gentleman, stands in the
doorway, one finger pointing at Steerforth who is taller by one head,
the other measuring the gap between Ham and Dan Peggotty, as if
offering Emily to his friend. Emily, meanwhile, still has her head
turned to Ham but the body is withdrawn and the look has become both
challenging and provocative. Phiz brings together in a single image a
whole bunch of unwritten information, which Dickens approved and
probably even suggested.


Reader's insight
==================
A third perspective is the point of view of the discerning reader who,
although generally carried away by sympathy for the narrator's
self-interested pleading, does not remain blissfully ignorant and ends
up recognizing the faults of the man and of the writer, just as the
reader also learns to identify and gauge the covert interventions of
the author.

The discerning reader listens to the adult Copperfield and hears what
this adult wants or does not want them to hear. "Even though this
manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine", (chapter 42) the book
exists, and the reader becomes 'ipso facto' a "father-confessor",
knowing how to judge and even, at times, to doubt the sincerity of the
emotion expressed. So, when Dora dies, the reader sees that the topic
of grief is dropped in a hurry, as if Copperfield had more important
things to do than to indulge in sorrow: "this is not the time at which
I am to enter a state of mind beneath its load of sorrow", which
creates a question and an embarrassment: is Copperfield protecting
himself from his confusion, or does he shed some crocodile tears for
form?

Copperfield also examines some of his most culpable weaknesses, such
as unconscious connivance (his "own unconscious part") in the
defilement of the Peggotty home by Steerforth, which he remains
forever incapable of opposing: "I believe that if I had been brought
face to face with him, I could not have uttered one reproach."(chapter
32) The same treatment is given to his childhood love, his so much
idealised Emily, who, once "fallen", is expelled from his
consciousness to the point where his last comment, when he stealthily
sees her aboard the ship leaving for Australia, is "a masterpiece of
narrative duplicity": far from seeing in her what she has become, a
real woman, he takes refuge behind the image of a pathetic religious
icon elegantly allowing him to remove his own guilt for betraying her.

These underground currents are thus revealed in David's psychological
struggle, Gareth Cordery concludes, currents that his narrative
unconsciously attempts to disguise.


The plot line
===============
The story is a road from which different paths leave. The road is that
of David's life, the main plot; the branches are born of meetings with
him and lead to several secondary intrigues taken more or less far
along. Each is represented by an important figure: Mr Micawber,
Steerforth, little Emily, Uriah Heep; there are side stories, that of
Martha Endell, Rosa Dartle, and, along the main road, stretch some
parallel paths on which the reader is from time to time invited: the
Traddles, Betsey Trotwood, the Peggotty family, Dan and Ham in
particular, Peggotty herself remaining from start to finish intimately
related to David. The different tracks do not move away from the main
avenue, and when they do, a narrative "forceps" brings them together
again. Hence the retrospective chapters and the ultimate
recapitulation were written.


The necessary summaries
=========================
The narrative is linear in appearance, as is usual in traditional
first-person form. It covers the narrator's life until the day he
decides to put an end to his literary endeavor. However, whole
sections of his life are summarised in a few paragraphs, or sometimes
just a sentence or two, indicating that three or ten years have
passed, or that Dora is dead, necessary to keep the story moving
along. Thus, the long stay of reflection in Switzerland which leads to
the recognition of love for Agnes, or the lapse of time before the
final chapter, are all blanks in the story. Besides the hero, this
story concerns important secondary characters such as Mr Micawber or
Uriah Heep, or Betsey Trotwood and Traddles, the few facts necessary
for a believable story are parsimoniously distilled in the final
chapters: an impromptu visit to a prison, the unexpected return of Dan
Peggotty from the Antipodes; so many false surprises for the narrator
who needs them to complete each person's personal story. As such, the
epilogue that represents the last chapter (Ch 64) is a model of the
genre, a systematic review, presumably inspired by his memory, without
true connection. There is the desire to finish with each one, with
forced exclamations and ecstatic observations, scrolling through the
lives of those who are frozen in time: Dick with his "Memorial" and
his kite, Dr Strong and his dictionary, and as a bonus, the news of
David's "least child", which implies that there have been other
children between him and eldest child Agnes of whom the reader has
never heard by name. So also goes the story of Dan Peggotty relating
the sad tale of his niece. The four chapters called "Retrospect"
(Chapter 18: "A Retrospect", Chapter 43: "Another Retrospect", Chapter
53: "Another Retrospect" and Chapter 64: "A Last Retrospect") are
placed at strategic moments of the general discourse, which play a
catch-up role more than one of meditation by the narrator, without
venturing into event details. Here, the narration has disappeared, it
has given way to a list, an enumeration of events.


Restructuring ''a posteriori''
================================
Dickens's approach, as shown in 'David Copperfield', does not escape
what  calls "the original sin of autobiography", that is to say a
restructuring 'a posteriori' and in this, paradoxically, it
demonstrates its authenticity. It consists of splitting one's life
into parts, choosing decisive phases, identifying an evolution and
endowing them with a direction and then a meaning, whereas, from day
to day, existence has been lived as a cluster of shapeless perceptions
requiring an immediate adaptation, that captures at best in the novel
the use of the historical present generally adopted by Dickens. It is
a succession of autonomous moments which do not end up amalgamating in
a coherent whole and that connect the tenuous thread of the "I"
recognizing each other. In this reconstruction, one part of truth and
the other of poetry, the famous 'Dichtung und Wahrheit' ('From my
Life: Poetry and Truth; 1811-1833'), autobiography of Goethe, there is
the obligatory absence of objectivity, the promotion of oblivion as an
integral part of memory, the ruling power of the subjectivity of time
found.

Thus, to use George Gusdorf's words again, 'David Copperfield' appears
as a "second reading of a man's experience", in this case, Charles
Dickens, when he reached the fullness of his career, tried to give "a
meaning to his legend".


                               Themes
======================================================================
This novel's main theme arises from the fact that it is a
bildungsroman, a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and
moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, which is
common in Dickens's novels, and in which character change is extremely
important. The changes involve David leaving past selves behind on the
way to maturity. Other important themes relate especially to Dickens's
social concerns, and his desire for reform. This includes the plight
of so-called "fallen women", and prostitutes, as well as the attitude
of middle-class society to these women; the status of women in
marriage; the rigid class structure; the prison system; educational
standards, and emigration to the colonies of what was becoming the
British Empire. The latter was a way for individuals to escape some of
the rigidity of British society and start anew. Some of these subjects
are directly satirized, while others are worked into the novel in more
complex ways by Dickens.


Different names
=================
Copperfield's path to maturity is marked by the different names
assigned to him: his mother calls him "Davy"; Murdstone calls him as
"Brooks of Sheffield"; for Peggotty's family, he is "Mas'r Davy"; en
route to boarding school from Yarmouth, he appears as "Master
Murdstone"; at Murdstone and Grinby, he is known as "Master
Copperfield"; Mr Micawber is content with "Copperfield"; for
Steerforth he is "Daisy"; he becomes "Mister Copperfield" with Uriah
Heep; and "Trotwood", soon shortened to "Trot" for Aunt Betsey; Mrs
Crupp deforms his name into "Mr Copperfull"; and for Dora he is
"Doady". While striving to earn his real name once and for all, this
plethora of names reflects the fluidity of Copperfield's personal and
social relationships, and obscure his real identity. It is by writing
his own story, and giving him his name in the title, that Copperfield
can finally assert who he is.


A series of lives
===================
David's life can be seen as a series of lives, each one in radical
disjunction from what follows, writes Paul Davis. The young boy in the
warehouse differs from Blunderstone Rookery's child, or Salem House
student, and overall David strives to keep these parts of himself
disconnected from each other. For example, in Chapter 17, while
attending Canterbury School, he met Mr Micawber at Uriah Heep's, and a
sudden terror gripped him that Heep could connect him, such as he is
today, and the abandoned child who lodged with the Micawber family in
London.

So many mutations indicate the name changes, which are sometimes
received with relief: "Trotwood Copperfield", when he finds refuge in
Dover at his Aunt Betsey's house, so the narrator writes, "Thus I
began my new life, in a new name, and with everything new about me."
Then, he realised "that a remoteness had come upon the old
Blunderstone life" and "that a curtain had for ever fallen on my life
at Murdstone and Grinby's".

There is a process of forgetfulness, a survival strategy developed by
memory, which poses a major challenge to the narrator; his art, in
fact, depends on the ultimate reconciliation of differences in order
to free and preserve the unified identity of his being a man.


"Will I be the hero of my own life?"
======================================
David opens his story with a question: Will I be the hero of my own
life? This means that he does not know where his approach will lead
him, that writing itself will be the test. As Paul Davis puts it, "In
this Victorian quest narrative, the pen might be lighter than the
sword, and the reader will be left to judge those qualities of the man
and the writer that constitute heroism.

However, question implies an affirmation: it is Copperfield, and no
one else, who will determine his life, the future is delusory, since
the games are already played, the life has been lived, with the novel
being only the story. Copperfield is not always the hero of his life,
and not always the hero of his story, as some characters have a
stronger role than him, Besides Steerforth, Heep, Micawber, for
example, he often appears passive and lightweight. Hence, concludes
Paul Davis, the need to read his life differently; it is more by
refraction through other characters that the reader has a true idea of
the "hero" of the story. What do these three men reveal to him, and
also to Dora, whom he marries? Another possible yardstick is a
comparison with the other two "writers" of the novel, Dr Strong and Mr
Dick. The dictionary of Strong will never be completed and, as a story
of a life, will end with the death of its author. As for Mr Dick, his
autobiographical project constantly raises the question of whether he
can transcend the incoherence and indecision of his subject-narrator.
Will he be able to take the reins, provide a beginning, a middle, an
end? Will he succeed in unifying the whole, in overcoming the trauma
of the past, his obsession with the decapitated royal head, so as to
make sense of the present and find a direction for the future?
According to Paul Davis, only Copperfield succeeds in constructing a
whole of his life, including suffering and failure, as well as
successes, and that is "one measure of his heroism as a writer".


The weight of the past
========================
The past "speaks" especially to David, "a child of close observation"
(chapter 2); the title of this chapter is: "I observe", and as an
adult he is endowed with a remarkable memory. So much so that the
story of his childhood is realised so concretely that the narrator,
like the reader, sometimes forgets that it is a lived past and not a
present that is given to see. The past tense verb is often the
'preterite' for the narrative, and the sentences are often short
independent propositions, each one stating a fact. Admittedly, the
adult narrator intervenes to qualify or provide an explanation,
without, however, taking precedence over the child's vision. And
sometimes, the story is prolonged by a reflection on the functioning
of the memory. So, again in chapter 2, the second and third paragraphs
comment on the first memory of the two beings surrounding David, his
mother, and Peggotty:

I believe I can remember these two at a little distance apart,
dwarfed to my sight by stooping or kneeling on the floor, and I going
unsteadily from the one to the other. I have an impression on my mind,
which I cannot distinguish from actual remembrance, of the touch of
Peggotty's forefinger as she used to hold it out to me, and of its
being roughened by needlework, like a pocket nutmeg-grater.
This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go
further back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I
believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to
be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think
that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect may with
greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty than to have
acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a
certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased,
which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their
childhood.

David thus succeeds, as George Orwell puts it, in standing "both
inside and outside a child's mind", a particularly important double
vision effect in the first chapters. The perspective of the child is
combined with that of the adult narrator who knows that innocence will
be violated and the feeling of security broken. Thus, even before the
intrusion of Mr Murdstone as step-father or Clara's death, the boy
feels "intimations of mortality". In the second chapter for example,
when David spends a day with Mr Murdstone, during the first episode of
"Brooks of Sheffield" in which, first blow to his confidence, he
realises little by little that Mr Murdstone and his comrade Quinion
are mocking him badly:


'That's Davy,' returned Mr Murdstone.
'Davy who?' said the gentleman. 'Jones?'
'Copperfield' said Mr Murdstone.
'What! Bewitching Mrs Copperfield's incumbrance?' cried the gentleman.
'The pretty little widow?'
'Quinion,' said Mr Murdstone, 'take care, if you please. Somebody's
sharp.'
'Who is?' asked the gentleman laughing.
I looked up quickly, being curious to know.
'Only Brooks of Sheffield', said Mr Murdstone.
I was quite relieved to find that it was only Brooks of Sheffield,
for, at first, I really thought it was I.
There seemed to be something very comical in the reputation of Mr
Brooks of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen laughed heartily when he
was mentioned, and Mr Murdstone was a good deal amused also.

The final blow, brutal and irremediable this time, is the vision, in
chapter 9, of his own reflection in his little dead brother lying on
the breast of his mother: "The mother who lay in the grave was the
mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms was myself, as I
had once been, hushed forever on her bosom".


A series of male models for David
===================================
David Copperfield is a posthumous child, that is, he was born after
his father died. From birth, his aunt is the authority who stands in
for the deceased father, and she decides Copperfield's identity by
abandoning him because he is not female. His first years are spent
with women, two Claras, his mother and Peggotty, which, according to
Paul Davis, "undermines his sense of masculinity". Hence a sensitivity
that the same critic calls "feminine", made-up of a lack of
confidence, naive innocence and anxiety, like that of his mother, who
was herself an orphan. Steerforth is not mistaken, when from the
outset he calls Copperfield "Daisy"-a flower of spring, symbol of
innocent youth. To forge an identity as a man and learn how to survive
in a world governed by masculine values, instinctively, he looks for a
father figure who can replace that of the father he did not have.

Several male models will successively offer themselves to him: the
adults Mr Murdstone, Mr Micawber and Uriah Heep, his comrades
Steerforth and Traddles.


Mr Murdstone
==============
Mr Murdstone darkens Copperfield's life instead of enlightening him,
because the principle of firmness which he champions, absolute novelty
for the initial family unit, if he instills order and discipline,
kills spontaneity and love. The resistance that Copperfield offers him
is symbolic: opposing a usurper without effective legitimacy, he fails
to protect his mother but escapes the straitjacket and achieves his
independence. Mr Murdstone thus represents the anti-father, double
negative of the one of which David was deprived, model 'a contrario'
of what it is not necessary to be.


Mr Micawber
=============
The second surrogate father is just as ineffective, although of a
diametrically opposed personality: it is Mr Micawber who, for his
part, lacks firmness to the point of sinking into irresponsibility.
Overflowing with imagination and love, in every way faithful and
devoted, inveterate optimist, he eventually becomes, in a way, the
child of David who helps him to alleviate his financial difficulties.
The roles are reversed and, by the absurdity, David is forced to act
as a man and to exercise adult responsibilities towards him. However,
the Micawbers are not lacking in charm, the round Wilkins, of course,
but also his dry wife, whose music helps her to live. Mrs Micawber
has, since childhood, two songs in her repertoire, the Scottish "The
dashing white sergeant" and the American lament "The little Tafflin
with the Silken Sash", whose attraction has decided her husband to
"win that woman or perish in the attempt" In addition to the melodies
that soothe and embellish, the words of the second, with her dream
"Should e'er the fortune be my lot to be made a wealthy bride!" and
her aphorism "Like attracts like" have become emblematic of the
couple, one is the opposite of reality and the other the very
definition of its harmony.


Uriah Heep
============
New avatar of this quest, Uriah Heep is "a kind of negative mirror to
David". Heep is clever at enlarging the pathos of his humble origins,
for example, which ability he exploits shamelessly to attract sympathy
and mask an unscrupulous ambition; while David, on the other hand,
tends to suppress his modest past and camouflage his social ambitions
under a veneer of worldly mistrust, prompting Paul Davis to conclude
that, just as Mr Murdstone is adept at firmness, Heep, in addition to
being a rascal, lacks the so-called feminine qualities of sensitivity
which David does not lose.


Steerforth
============
For David, Steerforth represents all that Heep is not: born a
gentleman, with no stated ambition or defined life plan, he has a
natural presence and charisma that immediately give him scope and
power.  However, his failure as a model is announced well before the
episode at Yarmouth where he seizes, like a thief, Little Emily before
causing her loss in Italy. He already shows himself as he is, brutal,
condescending, selfish and sufficient, towards Rosa Dartle, bruised by
him for life, and Mr Mell who undergoes the assaults of his cruelty.
The paradox is that even as he gauges his infamy, David remains from
start to finish dazzled by Steerforth's aristocratic ascendancy, even
as he contemplates him drowning on Yarmouth Beach, "lying with his
head upon his arm, as I had often seen him at school".


Traddles
==========
Now consider Traddles, the anti-Steerforth, the same age as the hero,
not very brilliant at school, but wise enough to avoid the
manipulations to which David succumbs. His attraction for moderation
and reserve assures him the strength of character that David struggles
to forge. Neither rich nor poor, he must also make a place for himself
in the world, at which he succeeds by putting love and patience at the
center of his priorities, the love that tempers the ambition and the
patience that moderates the passion. His ideal is to achieve justice
in his actions, which he ends up implementing in his profession
practically. In the end, Traddles, in his supreme modesty, represents
the best male model available to David.

There are others, Daniel Peggotty for example, all love and
dedication, who goes in search of his lost niece and persists in
mountains and valleys, beyond the seas and continents, to find her
trace. Mr Peggotty is the anti-Murdstone par excellence, but his
influence is rather marginal on David, as his absolute excellence,
like the maternal perfection embodied by his sister Peggotty, makes
him a character type more than an individual to refer to. There is
also the carter Barkis, original, laconic and not without defects, but
a man of heart. He too plays a role in the personal history of the
hero, but in a fashion too episodic to be significant, especially
since he dies well before the end of the story.


The hard path to the right balance
====================================
It is true that David's personal story makes it more difficult for him
to access the kind of equilibrium that Traddles presents, because it
seems destined, according to Paul Davis, to reproduce the errors
committed by his parents. So, without knowing it, he looks a lot like
his late father, also named David, who, according to Aunt Betsey, had
eyes only for the flower-women, and, as such, he finds himself as
irresistibly attracted to Dora whose delicate and charming femininity,
the sweet frivolity too, recall those of his diaphanous mother. The
chapters describing their loves are among the best in the novel
because Dickens manages to capture the painful ambivalence of David,
both passionately infatuated with the irresistible young woman, to
whom we can only pass and forgive everything, and frustrated by his
weak character and his absolute ignorance of any discipline. For love,
the supreme illusion of youth, he tries to change it, to "form her
mind", which leads him to recognize that "firmness" can to be a virtue
which, ultimately, he needs. However, finding himself in a community
of thought, even distantly, with his hateful and cruel stepfather whom
he holds responsible for the death of his mother and a good deal of
his own misfortunes, it was a troubling discovery.

It is his aunt Betsey who, by her character, represents the struggle
to find the right balance between firmness and gentleness, rationality
and empathy. Life forced Betsey Trotwood to assume the role she did
not want, that of a father, and as such she became, but in her own
way, adept at steadfastness and discipline. From an initially culpable
intransigence, which led her to abandon the newborn by denouncing the
incompetence of the parents not even capable of producing a girl, she
finds herself gradually tempered by circumstances and powerfully
helped by the "madness" of her protege, Mr Dick. He, between two
flights of kites that carry away the fragments of his personal
history, and without his knowing it, plays a moderating role,
inflecting the rationality of his protector by his own irrationality,
and his cookie-cutter judgments by considerations of seeming
absurdity, but which, taken literally, prove to be innate wisdom. In
truth, Aunt Betsey, despite her stiffness and bravado, does not
dominate her destiny; she may say she can do it, yet she cannot get
David to be a girl, or escape the machinations of Uriah Heep any more
than the money demands of her mysterious husband. She also fails, in
spite of her lucidity, her clear understanding, of the love blindness
of her nephew, to prevent him from marrying Dora and in a parallel
way, to reconcile the Strongs. In fact, in supreme irony, it is once
again Mr Dick who compensates for his inadequacies, succeeding with
intuition and instinctive understanding of things, to direct Mr
Micawber to save Betsey from the clutches of Heep and also to dispel
the misunderstandings of Dr Strong and his wife Annie.

As often in Dickens where a satellite of the main character reproduces
the course in parallel, the story of the Strong couple develops in
counterpoint that of David and Dora. While Dora is in agony, David,
himself obsessed with his role as a husband, observes the Strongs who
are busy unraveling their marital distress. Two statements made by
Annie Strong impressed him: in the first, she told him why she
rejected Jack Maldon and thanked her husband for saving her "from the
first impulse of an undisciplined heart". The second was like a flash
of revelation: "There can be no disparity in marriage like
unsuitability of mind and purpose". At the end of chapter 45, almost
entirely devoted to the epilogue of this affair, David meditates on
these words which he repeats several times and whose relevance,
applied to his own case, is imposed on him. He concludes that in all
things, discipline tempered by kindness and kindness is necessary for
the equilibrium of a successful life. Mr Murdstone preached firmness;
in that, he was not wrong. Where he cruelly failed was that he matched
it with selfish brutality instead of making it effective by the love
of others.


The happiness of maturity with Agnes
======================================
It is because David has taken stock of his values and accepted the
painful memories of Dora's death, that he is finally ready to go
beyond his emotional blindness and recognize his love for Agnes
Wickfield, the one he already has called the "true heroine" of the
novel to which he gives his name. Paul Davis writes that Agnes is
surrounded by an aura of sanctity worthy of a stained glass window,
that she is more a consciousness or an ideal than a person, that,
certainly, she brings the loving discipline and responsibility of
which the hero needs, but lacks the charm and human qualities that
made Dora so attractive. Adrienne E Gavin, nuancing the point, writes
that she is neither more nor less caricature than other young women in
the hero's life: if Emily is a stereotype of the "lost woman" and Dora
of "woman-child", Agnes is that of "ideal Victorian woman", which
necessarily limits, for her as for the others, the possibilities of
evolution, the only change available from a loving and devoted
daughter to a loving and devoted wife.

That said, the writer David, now David Copperfield, realised the vow
expressed to Agnes (when he was newly in love with Dora, in Chapter
35. Depression): "If I had a conjurer's cap, there is no one I should
have wished but for you". At the end of his story, he realises that
the conjurer's cap is on his head, that he can draw his attention to
the people he loves and trusts. Thus, 'David Copperfield' is the story
of a journey through life and through oneself, but also, by the grace
of the writer, the recreation of the tenuous thread uniting the child
and the adult, the past and the present, in what Georges Gusdorf calls
"fidelity to the person". or, as Robert Ferrieux said,


Social questions
==================
Admittedly, it is not the primary interest of 'David Copperfield' that
remains above all the story of a life told by the very one who lived
it, but the novel is imbued with a dominant ideology, that of the
middle class, advocating moral constancy, hard work, separate spheres
for men and women, and, in general, the art of knowing one's place,
indeed staying in that place. Further, some social problems and
repeated abuses being topical, Dickens took the opportunity to expose
them in his own way in his fiction, and Trevor Blount, in his
introduction to the 1966 edition Penguin Classics, reissued in 1985,
devotes several pages to this topic.

However, Gareth Cordery shows that behind the display of Victorian
values, often hides a watermarked discourse that tends to question,
test, and even subvert them. There are therefore two possible
readings, the one that remains on the surface and another that
questions below this surface, the implicit questions.

Among the social issues that 'David Copperfield' is concerned with,
are prostitution, the prison system, education, as well as society's
treatment of the insane.

Dickens's views on education are reflected in the contrast he makes
between the harsh treatment that David receives at the hands of
Creakle at Salem House and Dr Strong's school where the methods used
inculcate honour and self-reliance in its pupils.

Through the character of "the amiable, innocent, and wise fool" Mr
Dick, Dickens's "advocacy in the humane treatment of the insane" can
be seen. Mr Dick's brother

::didn't like to have him visible about his house, and sent him away
to some private asylum-place: though he had been left to his
particular care by their deceased father, who thought him almost a
natural. And a wise man he must have been to think so! Mad himself, no
doubt.

So Betsy Trotwood, continuing Mr Dick's story in Chapter 14, stepped
in to suggest that Mr Dick should be given "his little income, and
come and live with" her: "I am ready to take care of him, and shall
not ill-treat him as some people (besides the asylum-folks) have
done."


Victorian child exploitation
==============================
The employment of young children in factories and mines under harsh
conditions in the early Victorian era disturbed many. There was a
series of Parliamentary enquiries into the working conditions of
children, and these "reports shocked writers Elizabeth Barrett
Browning and Charles Dickens." Dickens describes children working in
factories or other workplaces in several novels, notably in 'Oliver
Twist', and in 'David Copperfield'. Young David works in a factory for
a while after his mother dies and his stepfather showed no interest in
him. Such depictions contributed to the call for legislative reform.


Prison discipline
===================
Dickens satirises contemporary ideas about how prisoners should be
treated in Chapter 61, 'I am Shown Two Interesting Penitents'. In this
chapter, published in November 1850, David along with Traddles is
shown around a large well-built new prison, modelled on Pentonville
prison (built in 1842), where a new, supposedly more humane, system of
incarceration is in operation, under the management of David's former
headmaster Creakle. A believer in firmness, Dickens denounced
comically the system of isolating prisoners in separate cells, the
"separate system", and giving them healthy and pleasant food. His
satire appeals directly to the public, already warned by the long
controversy over the prison discipline in the press. Mr Creakle is
very proud of this new system, but his enthusiasm is immediately
undermined by the reminder of his former ferocity as a school
principal. In the prison David and Traddles encounter 'model
prisoners' 27 and 28, who they discover are Uriah Heep and Mr
Littimer. Heep is seen reading a hymn book and Littimer also "walked
forth, reading a good book": both have managed to convince the naïve
Creakle, and his fellow magistrates, that they have seen the error of
their ways. Both are questioned about the quality of the food and
Creakle promises improvements.

Dickens's ideas in this chapter were in line with Carlyle, whose
pamphlet, "Model Prisons", also denounced Pentonville Prison, was
published in the spring of 1850. Indeed, Dickens had published
anonymously, a month after Carlyle's pamphlet on the same subject,
"Pet Prisonners".


Emigration to Australia
=========================
Dickens's exploration of the subject of emigration in the novel has
been criticised, initially by John Forster and later by G. K.
Chesterton. Chesterton accused Dickens of presenting emigration in an
excessively optimistic light, arguing that Dickens believed that by
sending a boatload of people overseas their 'souls' can be changed,
while ignoring the fact that poor people like Peggotty have seen their
home stained or, like Emily, their honour tarnished. Micawber has been
broken by the English social system, his journey to the antipodes is
paid for by a paragon of the Victorian bourgeoisie, Betsey Trotwood
and he is supposed to regain control of his destiny once he has
arrived in Australia. Trevor Blount points out that the word 'soul'
has a different meaning for Dickens than Chesterton. Dickens cares
about material and psychological happiness, and is convinced that
physical well-being is a comfort for life's wounds.

Dickens sent his characters to America in 'Nicholas Nickleby' and
'Martin Chuzzlewit', but he has the Peggotty and Micawber families
emigrate to Australia. This approach was part of the official policy
of the 1840s, focusing on Australia as a land of welcome. It was at
this time necessary to stimulate interest in the new colony and
propagandists arrived in England in particular John Dunmore Lang and
Caroline Chisholm from Australia. Dickens was only following this
movement and, in any case, had faith in family colonisation. Moreover,
the idea that redemption could be achieved by such a new start in a
person's life was a preoccupation of the author, and he saw here
subject matter to charm his readers.

From the point of view of the novel's inner logic, in order for
Copperfield to complete his psychological maturation and exist
independently, Dickens must expel his surrogate fathers, including
Peggotty and Micawber, and emigration is an easy way to remove them.


Visions for society
=====================
The episode in the prison, according to novelist Angus Wilson, is more
than a piece of journalism; it represents Dickens's vision of the
society in which he lives. The same can be said of the episodes
concerning prostitution and emigration, which illuminate the limits of
Copperfield's moral universe and Dickens's own uncertainties. That
everything is put in order in Australia, that Martha marries a man
from the bush, that Emily, in the strong arms of Dan Peggotty, becomes
a lady of good works, that Micawber, who had been congenitally
insolvent, suddenly acquires the management skills and becomes
prosperous in dispensing justice. All these conversions are somewhat
'ironic', and tend to undermine the hypothesis of 'a Dickens believing
in the miracle of the antipodes', which Jane Rogers considers in her
analysis of the 'fallen woman' as a plot device to gain the sympathy
of Dickens's readers for Emily.


The middle-class ideology
===========================
John Forster, Dickens's early biographer, praises the bourgeois or
middle-class values and ideology found in 'David Copperfield'. Like
him the Victorian reading public shared Copperfield's complacent
views, expressed with the assurance of success that is his, at the
end, as a recognized writer who is happy in marriage and safe from
need.

Gateth Cordery takes a close look at class consciousness. According to
him, Copperfield's relationship with aristocrat Steerforth and the
humble Uriah Heep is "crucial". From the beginning, Copperfield ranks
as and is considered by his friends among the good people. The
Peggotty family, in Chapter 3, treat him with respect, "as a visitor
of distinction"; even at Murdstone and Grinby, his behaviour and
clothes earned him the title of "the little gentleman". When he
reached adulthood, he naturally enjoyed Steerforth's disdain for Ham
as a simple "joke about the poor". So he is predisposed to succumb, by
what he calls in chapter 7 an "inborn power of attraction", to the
charm instinctively lent to beautiful people, about which David said
"a kind of enchantment ... to which it was a natural weakness to
yield." From start to finish, David remains fascinated by Steerforth,
so he aspires inwardly to his social status.

In parallel there is a contempt of the upstart, Heep, hatred of the
same nature as Copperfield's senseless adoration for Steerforth, but
inverted. That "'umble" Heep goes from a lowly clerk to an associate
at Wickfield's, to claiming to win the hand of Agnes, daughter of his
boss, is intolerable to David, though it is very similar to his own
efforts to go from shorthand clerk to literary fame, with Dora
Spenlow, the daughter of his employer. Heep's innuendo that
Copperfield is no better than him feeds on the disdain in which he
holds Heep as of right: "Copperfield, you've always been an upstart",
an honesty of speech, comments Cordery, of which Copperfield himself
is incapable.


Marriage
==========
Another concern of Dickens is the institution of marriage and in
particular, the unenviable place occupied by women. Whether at the
home of Wickfield, Strong, or under the Peggotty boat, women are
vulnerable to predators or intruders like Uriah Heep, Jack Maldon,
James Steerforth; Murdstone's firmness prevails up to the death of two
wives; with David and Dora complete incompetence reigns; and at the
Micawber household, love and chaos go hand in hand; while Aunt Betsey
is subjected to blackmail by her mysterious husband. Dickens,
according to Gareth Cordery, clearly attacks the official status of
marriage, which perpetuated an inequality between the sexes, an
injustice that does not end with the separation of couples.

The mid-Victorian era saw a change in gender roles for men and women,
in part forced by the factories and separation of work and home, which
made stereotypes of the woman at home and the man working away from
home. Values, like the imperative need for women to marry and to be
that ideal described as The Angel in the House (manages the home
without aid and is always calm) are "interrogated, tested and even
subverted", for example by having one mother-figure be the character
Betsey Trotwood, who is not a mother. When seeming to describe a
stereotypical image in particularly the female characters, the story
"does so in a way that reflects the fault-lines of the image."

Anne Brontë in 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' (1848) explores this
iniquity in the status of the character Helen Graham, separated from
her alcoholic husband. Dickens's understanding of the burden on women
in marriage in this novel contrasts with his treatment of his own wife
Catherine, whom he expected to be an Angel in the House.


The fallen woman
==================
Martha Endell and Emily Peggotty, the two friends in Yarmouth who work
at the undertaker's house, reflect Dickens's commitment to "save"
so-called fallen women. Dickens was co-founder with Angela
Burdett-Coutts of Urania Cottage, a home for young women who had
"turned to a life of immorality", including theft and prostitution. On
the eve of her wedding to her cousin and fiancé, Ham, Emily abandons
him for Steerforth. After Steerforth deserts her, she doesn't go back
home, because she has disgraced herself and her family. Her uncle, Mr
Peggotty, finds her in London on the brink of being forced into
prostitution. So that she may have a fresh start away from her now
degraded reputation, she and her uncle emigrate to Australia. Martha
has been a prostitute and contemplated suicide but towards the end of
the novel, she redeems herself by helping Daniel Peggotty find his
niece after she returns to London. She goes with Emily to start a new
life in Australia. There, she marries and lives happily.

Their emigration to Australia, in the wake of that of Micawber, Daniel
Peggotty, and Mr Mell, emphasizes Dickens's belief that social and
moral redemption can be achieved in a distant place, where someone may
create a new and healthy life. However, despite their families'
forgiveness, they remain "tainted" and their expulsion from England is
symbolic of their status: it is only at the other end of the world
that these "social outcasts" can be reinstated. Morally, Dickens here
conforms to the dominant middle-class opinion.


The exception of Rosa Dartle
==============================
John O. Jordan devotes two pages to this woman, also "lost", though
never having sinned. The sanctification of the Victorian home, he
says, depends on the opposition between two stereotypes, the "angel"
and the "whore". Dickens denounced this restrictive dichotomy by
portraying women "in between". Such is Rosa Dartle, passionate being,
with the inextinguishable resentment of having been betrayed by
Steerforth, a wound that is symbolised by the vibrant scar on her lip.
Never does she allow herself to be assimilated by the dominant
morality, refusing tooth and nail to put on the habit of the ideal
woman. Avenger to the end, she wants the death of Little Emily, both
the new conquest and victim of the same predator, and has only
contempt for the efforts of David to minimize the scope of his words.
As virtuous as anyone else, she claims, especially that Emily, she
does not recognize any ideal family, each being moulded in the manner
of its social class, nor any affiliation as a woman: she is Rosa
Dartle, in herself.

David's vision, on the other hand, is marked by class consciousness:
for him, Rosa, emaciated and ardent at the same time, as if there were
incompatibility (chapter 20), is a being apart, half human, half
animal, like the lynx, with its inquisitive forehead, always on the
look out (chapter 29), which consumes an inner fire reflected in the
gaunt eyes of the dead of which only this flame remains (chapter 20).
In reality, says Jordan, it is impossible for David to understand or
even imagine any sexual tension, especially that which governs the
relationship between Rosa and Steerforth, which, in a way, reassures
his own innocence and protects what he calls his "candour" - frankness
or angelism? - his story. Also, Rosa Dartle's irreducible and angry
marginality represents a mysterious threat to his comfortable and
reassuring domestic ideology.


                      Dickens's way of writing
======================================================================
Dickens's approach to the novel is influenced by various literary
genres, including the picaresque novel tradition, melodrama, and the
novel of sensibility. Satire and irony are central to the picaresque
novel. Comedy is also an aspect of the British picaresque novel
tradition of Laurence Sterne, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett.
Fielding's 'Tom Jones' was a major influence on the nineteenth century
novel including Dickens, who read it in his youth, and named a son
Henry Fielding Dickens in his honour. Melodrama is typically
sensational and designed to appeal strongly to the emotions.

Trevor Blount comments on the fascination that Dickens has always
exercised on the public. He mentions the lavishness, energy,
vividness, brilliance, and tenderness of Dickens's writing, along with
the range of his imagination. Blount also refers to Dickens's humour,
and his use of the macabre and of pathos. Finally, Blount celebrates
the artistic mastery of an overflowing spontaneity, which is conveyed
with both delicacy and subtlety. What Blount admires, in the first
place, is the vigour with which the characters "rise" from the page
and create a "phantasmagorical" universe, which is seen by the reader
with the intensity of an hallucination. This is best illustrated in
many of Dickens's works, by the powerful figure of a weak individual.
In 'David Copperfield' Mr Wilkins Micawber is such a figure, someone
who is formidably incompetent, grandiose in his irreducible optimism,
sumptuous in his verbal virtuosity, and whose grandiloquent tenderness
is irresistibly comical. Micawber has been described as "With the one
exception of Falstaff, ... the greatest comic figure in English
literature".

In this novel, one characteristic noted by Edgar Johnson is that
Dickens, in the first part, "makes the reader see with the eyes of a
child", an innovative technique for the time, first tried in 'Dombey
and Son' with an omniscient narrator, and carried here to perfection
through the use of the 'I'.

Modernist novelist Virginia Woolf writes, that when we read Dickens
"we remodel our psychological geography ... [as he produces]
characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but
abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing
remarks".


Satire and pathos
===================
The very principle of satire is to question, and to tear off the
masks, so as to reveal the raw reality under the varnish. Dickens uses
the whole arsenal of literary tools that are available to the
satirist, or rather supplied by his narrator, David, who even directs
satire upon himself. These tools include irony, humour, and
caricature. How it is employed relates to the characters' differing
personalities. Satire is thus gentler towards some characters than
others; toward David the hero-narrator, it is at once indulgent and
transparent.


Types of character
====================
There are several different types of character: On the one hand, there
are the good ones, Peggotty, Dr Strong, Traddles, Agnes etc., on the
other hand, there are the bad ones, Murdstone, Steerforth, Uriah Heep,
etc. A third category are characters who change over time, including
Betsey Trotwood, who at first is more obstinate than nasty, it is
true, and Martha Endell, and Creakle, etc. There is also a contrast
drawn between ever-frozen personalities such as Micawber, Dora, Rosa
Dartle, and those who evolve. The latter includes David, Mr Mell, Miss
Mowcher. There is also a contrast drawn between the idiosyncrasies of
Mr Dick, Barkis, Mrs Gummidge, and the subtle metamorphosis from
innocence to maturity of characters like David, Traddles, Agnes.

Dickens worked intensively on developing arresting names for his
characters that would reverberate with associations for his readers,
and assist the development of motifs in the storyline, giving what one
critic calls an "allegorical impetus" to a novel's meanings. The name
Mr Murdstone in 'David Copperfield' conjures up twin allusions to
"murder" and stony coldness; Strong is definitely not "strong";
Creakle "squeaks and grinds". There can also be a visual dimension to
Dickens's humour. This includes Micawber's rotundity, his wife's
dried-up body, which forever offers a sterile breast, Betsey's
steadfast stiffness, Mr Sharp's bowed head, Daniel Peggotty's stubborn
rudeness, Clara Copperfield's delicate silhouette, and Dora's
mischievous air. Then there are exaggerated attitudes that are
constantly repeated. Dickens creates humour out of character traits,
such as Mr Dick's kite flying, James Steerforth's insistent charm,
Uriah Heep's obsequiousness, Betsey pounding David's room. There are
in addition the employment of repetitive verbal phrases: "umble" of
the same Heep, the "willin" of Barkis, the "lone lorn creetur" of Mrs
Gummidge. Dickens also uses objects for a humorous purpose, like
Traddles's skeletons, the secret box of Barkis, the image of Heep as a
snake, and the metallic rigidity of Murdstone.


Pathos and indulgent humour
=============================
In 'David Copperfield' idealised characters and highly sentimental
scenes are contrasted with caricatures and ugly social truths. While
good characters are also satirised, a considered sentimentality
replaces satirical ferocity. This is a characteristic of all of
Dickens's writing, but it is reinforced in 'David Copperfield' by the
fact that these people are the narrator's close family members and
friends, who are devoted to David and sacrificing themselves for his
happiness. Hence the indulgence applied from the outset, with humour
prevailing along with loving complicity. David is the first to receive
such treatment, especially in the section devoted to his early
childhood, when he is lost in the depths of loneliness in London,
following his punishment by Mr Murdstone. Michael Hollington analyses
a scene in chapter 11 that seems emblematic of the situation and how
humour and sentimentality are employed by Dickens. This is the episode
where the very young David orders a pitcher of the best beer in a
public house, "To moisten what I had for dinner". David's memory has
retained the image of the scene, which is so vivid that he sees
himself as from the outside. He has forgotten the exact date (his
birthday). This episode release David's emotional pain, writes Michael
Hollington, obliterating the infected part of the wound. Beyond the
admiration aroused for the amazing self-confidence of the little
child, in resolving this issue and taking control of his life with the
assurance of someone much older, the passage "testifies to the work of
memory, transfiguring the moment into a true myth". The tone is
nostalgic because, ultimately, the epilogue is a true moment of grace.
The wife of the keeper, returning David's money, deposits on his
forehead a gift that has become extremely rare, a kiss, "Half admired
and half compassionate", but above all full of kindness and
femininity; at least, adds David, as a tender and precious reminder,
"I am sure".


Theatricality
===============
Dickens went to the theatre regularly from an early age and even
considered becoming an actor in 1832. "Many of the plays that he saw
on the London stage in the 1820s and 1830s were melodramas". There is
a visual, theatrical--even cinematic--element in some scenes in 'David
Copperfield'. The cry of Martha at the edge of the river belongs to
the purest Victorian melodrama, as does the confrontation between Mr
Peggotty and Mrs Steerforth, in chapter 32:

::I justify nothing, I make no counter-accusations. But I am sorry to
repeat, it is impossible. Such a marriage would irretrievably blight
my son's career, and ruin his prospects. Nothing is more certain than
that, it never can take place, and never will. If there is any other
compensation.

Such language, according to Trevor Blount, is meant to be said aloud.
Many other scenes employ the same method: Micawber crossing the
threshold, Heep harassing David in Chapter 17, the chilling apparition
of Littimer in the middle of David's party in Chapter 27. The climax
of this splendid series of scenes is the storm off Yarmouth, which is
an epilogue to the menacing references to the sea previously, which
shows Dicken's most intense virtuosity (chapter 55).

Dickens made the following comment in 1858: "Every good actor plays
direct to every good author, and every writer of fiction, though he
may not adopt the dramatic form, writes in effect for the stage".


Setting
=========
Setting is a major aspect of Dickens's "narrative artistry and of his
methods of characterization", so that "the most memorable quality of
his novels may well be their atmospheric density [... of the]
descriptive writing".

In 'David Copperfield' setting is less urban, more rustic than in
other novels, and especially maritime. Besides Peggotty, who is a
seaman whose home is an overturned hull, Mr Micawber goes to the naval
port of Plymouth on the south coast after prison and appears finally
on board a steamer. David himself is connected to Yarmouth, and Aunt
Betsey settled in the Channel port of Dover. Young David notices the
sea on his first day at her home; "the air from the sea came blowing
in again, mixed with the perfume of the flowers". The city, London, is
especially the place of misfortune, where the dark warehouse of
Murdstone and Grinby are found. The philosopher Alain (pseudonym of
Émile-Auguste Chartier) comments as follows about Dickens's portrayal
of London (but it might also be applied to other locations), as cited
by Lançon:

::The Dickensian atmosphere, unlike any other, comes from the way the
distinctive nature of a dwelling is linked to the personality of its
inhabitant [...] [There is there] a look that creates a sense of
reality, with the remarkable connection between buildings and
characters.


Symbolism
===========
Important symbols include, imprisonment, the sea, flowers, animals,
dreams, and Mr Dick's kite. According to Henri Suhamy, "Dickens's
symbolism consists in giving significance to physical details ... The
constant repetition of these details ... contributes to deepen their
emblematic significance". This may include the characters, aspects of
the story, and, more prominently amongst the motifs, places or
objects.
Separating realism and symbolism can be tricky, especially, for
example, when it relates, to the subject of imprisonment, which is
both a very real place of confinement for the Micawber family, and,
more generally throughout 'David Copperfield', symbolic of the damage
inflicted on a sick society, trapped in its inability to adapt or
compromise, with many individuals walled within in themselves.

The imponderable power of the sea is almost always associated with
death: it took Emily's father; will take Ham and Steerforth, and in
general is tied to David's "unrest" associated with his Yarmouth
experiences. In the end nothing remains but Steerforth's body cast-up
as "flotsam and jetsam", that symbolises the moral emptiness of
David's adoration. The violent storm in Yarmouth coincides with the
moment when the conflicts reached a critical threshold, when it is as
if angry Nature called for a final resolution; as Kearney noted, "The
rest of the novel is something of an anti-climax after the storm
chapter." Referring to the climactic storm scene in 'David
Copperfield', the last in any Dickens novel, Kearney remarked that
"The symbolism of sea, sky and storm is successfully integrated to
achieve what amounts to a mystical dimension in the novel, and this
mystical dimension is, on the whole, more acceptable than the ones
found elsewhere in Dickens".

According to Daniel L Plung, four types of animal are a particularly
important aspect of the way symbolism is used: song birds symbolise
innocence; "lions and raptors [are] associated with the fallen but not
evil"; dogs, other than Jip, are associated "with the malicious and
self-interested"; while snakes and eel represent evil. A typical
example of the way that animal symbolism is used is found in the
following sentence: " 'the influence of the Murdstones upon me [David]
was like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird" '.
When David describes Steerforth as "brave as a lion" this is a clue to
Steerforth's moral weakness and foreshadows subsequent events.

Flowers symbolise innocence, for example, David is called "Daisy" by
Steerforth, because he is naive and pure, while Dora constantly paints
bouquets, and when Heep was removed from Wickfield House, flowers
return to the living room. Mr Dick's kite, represents how much he is
both outside and above society, immune to its hierarchical social
system. Furthermore, it flies among the innocent birds, and just as
this toy soothes and gives joy to him, Mr Dick heals the wounds and
restore peace where the others without exception have failed.

Dreams are also an important part of the novel's underlying symbolic
structure, and are "used as a transitional device to bind [its] parts
together" with twelve chapters ending "with a dream or reverie". In
the early dark period of David's life his dreams "are invariably
ugly", but in later chapters they are more mixed, with some reflecting
"fanciful hopes" that are never realised, while others are nightmares
which foreshadow "actual problems".

In addition physical beauty, in the form of Clara, is emblematic of
moral good, while the ugliness of Uriah Heep, Mr Creakle and Mr
Murdstone underlines their villainy. While David, the story's hero,
has benefited from her love and suffered from the violence of the
others.


Dialect
=========
Dickens, in preparation for this novel, went to Norwich, Lowestoft,
and Yarmouth where the Peggotty family resides, but he stayed there
for only five hours, on 9 January 1849. He assured his friends, that
his descriptions were based on his own memories, brief as were his
local experiences. However, looking to the work of K. J. Fielding
reveals that the dialect of this town was taken from a book written by
a local author, Major Edward Moor published in 1823. There, Dickens
found 'a beein' (a house), 'fisherate' (officiate), 'dodman' (snail),
'clickesen' (gossip), and 'winnicking' (tears) from 'winnick' (to cry)
and so on.


                Literary significance and reception
======================================================================
Many view this novel as Dickens's masterpiece, beginning with his
friend and first biographer John Forster, who writes: "Dickens never
stood so high in reputation as at the completion of Copperfield", and
the author himself calls it "his favourite child". It is true, he
says, that "underneath the fiction lay something of the author's
life", that is, an experience of self-writing. It is therefore not
surprising that the book is often placed in the category of
autobiographical works. From a strictly literary point of view,
however, it goes beyond this framework in the richness of its themes
and the originality of its writing.

Situated in the middle of Dickens's career, it represents, according
to Paul Davis, a turning point in his work, the point of separation
between the novels of youth and those of maturity. In 1850, Dickens
was 38 years old and had twenty more to live, which he filled with
other masterpieces, often denser, sometimes darker, that addressed
most of the political, social and personal issues he faced.


"The privileged child" of Dickens
===================================
Dickens welcomed the publication of his work with intense emotion, and
he continued to experience this until the end of his life. When he
went through a period of personal difficulty and frustration in the
1850s, he returned to 'David Copperfield' as to a dear friend who
resembled him: "Why," he wrote to Forster, "Why is it, as with poor
David, a sense comes always crashing on me now, when I fall into low
spirits, as of one happiness I have missed in life, and one friend and
companion I have never made?" When Dickens begins writing 'Great
Expectations', which was also written in the first person, he reread
'David Copperfield' and confided his feelings to Forster: "was
affected by it to a degree you would hardly believe". Criticism has
not always been even-handed, though over time the high importance of
this novel has been recognised.


Initial reception
===================
Although Dickens became a Victorian celebrity his readership was
mainly the middle classes, including the so-called skilled workers,
according to the French critic Fabrice Bensimon, because ordinary
people could not afford it. Issues I to V of the serial version
reached 25,000 copies in two years, modest sales compared to 32,000
'Dombey and Son' and 35,000 'Bleak House', but Dickens was
nevertheless happy: "Everyone is cheering David on", he writes to Mrs
Watson, and, according to Forster, his reputation was at the top.

The first reviews were mixed, but the great contemporaries of Dickens
showed their approval: Thackeray found the novel "freshly and simply
simple"; John Ruskin, in his 'Modern Painters', was of the opinion
that the scene of the storm surpasses Turner's evocations of the sea;
more soberly, Matthew Arnold declared it "rich in merits"; and, in his
autobiographical book 'A Small Boy and Others', Henry James evokes the
memory of "treasure so hoarded in the dusty chamber of youth".


Subsequent reputation
=======================
After Dickens's death, 'David Copperfield' rose to the forefront of
the writer's works, both through sales, for example, in 'Household
Words' in 1872 where sales reached 83,000, and the praise of critics.
In 1871, Scottish novelist and poet Margaret Oliphant described it as
"the culmination of Dickens's early comic fiction"; However, in the
late nineteenth-century Dickens's critical reputation suffered a
decline, though he continued to have many readers. This began when
Henry James in 1865 "relegated Dickens to the second division of
literature on the grounds that he could not 'see beneath the surface
of things'". Then in 1872, two years after Dickens's death, George
Henry Lewes wondered how to "reconcile [Dickens's] immense popularity
with the 'critical contempt' which he attracted". However, Dickens was
defended by the novelist George Gissing in 1898 in 'Charles Dickens: A
Critical Study'. G. K. Chesterton published an important defence of
Dickens in his book 'Charles Dickens' in 1906, where he describes him
as this "most English of our great writers". Dickens's literary
reputation grew in the 1940s and 1950s because of essays by George
Orwell and Edmund Wilson (both published in 1940), and Humphrey
House's 'The Dickens World' (1941). However, in 1948, F. R. Leavis in
'The Great Tradition', contentiously, excluded Dickens from his canon,
characterising him as a "popular entertainer" without "mature
standards and interests".

Dickens's reputation, however, continued to grow and K. J. Fielding
(1965) and Geoffrey Thurley (1976) identify what they call 'David
Copperfields "centrality", and Q. D. Leavis in 1970, looked at the
images he draws of marriage, of women, and of moral simplicity. In
their 1970 publication 'Dickens the Novelist', F. R. and Q. D. Leavis
called Dickens "one of the greatest of creative writers", and F. R.
Leavis had changed his mind about Dickens since his 1948 work, no
longer finding the popularity of the novels with readers as a barrier
to their seriousness or profundity. In 1968 Sylvère Monod, after
having finely analyzed the structure and style of the novel, describe
it as "the triumph of the art of Dickens", which analysis was shared
by Paul B. Davis. The central themes are explored by Richard Dunne in
1981, including the autobiographical dimension, the narrator-hero
characterization process, memory and forgetting, and finally the
privileged status of the novel in the interconnection between similar
works of Dickens. Q. D. Leavis compares 'Copperfield' to Tolstoy's
'War and Peace' and looks at adult-child relationships in both novels.
According to writer Paul B. Davis, Q. D. Leavis excels at dissecting
David's relationship with Dora. Gwendolyn Needham in an essay,
published in 1954, analyzes the novel as a bildungsroman, as did
Jerome H. Buckley twenty years later. In 1987 Alexander Welsh devoted
several chapters to show that 'Copperfield' is the culmination of
Dickens's autobiographical attempts to explore himself as a novelist
in the middle of his career. Finally, J. B. Priestley was particularly
interested in Mr Micawber and concludes that "With the one exception
of Falstaff, he is the greatest comic figure in English literature".

In 2015, the BBC Culture section polled book critics outside the UK
about novels by British authors; they ranked 'David Copperfield'
eighth on the list of the 100 Greatest British Novels. The characters
and their varied places in society in the novel evoked reviewer
comments, for example, the novel is "populated by some of the most
vivid characters ever created,"  "David himself, Steerforth, Peggotty,
Mr Dick - and it climbs up and down and off the class ladder.",
remarked by critic Maureen Corrigan and echoed by Wendy Lesser.


Opinions of other writers
===========================
'David Copperfield' has pleased many writers. Charlotte Brontë, for
example, commented in 1849 in a letter to the reader of her publisher:
"I have read 'David Copperfield'; it seems to me very good--admirable
in some parts. You said it had affinity to 'Jane Eyre': it has--now
and then--only what an advantage has Dickens in his varied knowledge
of men and things!" Tolstoy, for his part, considered it "the best
work of the best English novelist" and, according to F. R. Leavis and
Q. D. Leavis, was inspired by David and Dora's love story to have
Prince Andrew marry Princess Lise in 'War and Peace'. Henry James
remembered being moved to tears, while listening to the novel, hidden
under a table, read aloud in the family circle. Dostoevsky
enthusiastically cultivated the novel in a prison camp in Siberia.
Franz Kafka wrote in his diary in 1917, that the first chapter of his
novel 'Amerika' was inspired by 'David Copperfield'. James Joyce
parodied it in 'Ulysses'. Virginia Woolf, who was not very fond of
Dickens, states that 'David Copperfield', along with 'Robinson
Crusoe', Grimm's fairy tales, Scott's 'Waverley' and 'Pickwick's
Posthumous Papers', "are not books, but stories communicated by word
of mouth in those tender years when fact and fiction merge, and thus
belong to the memories and myths of life, and not to its aesthetic
experience." Woolf also noted in a letter to Hugh Walpole in 1936,
that she is re-reading it for the sixth time: "I'd forgotten how
magnificent it is." It also seems that the novel was Sigmund Freud's
favourite; and Somerset Maugham sees it as a "great" work, although
his hero seems to him rather weak, unworthy even of its author, while
Mr Micawber never disappoints: "The most remarkable of them is, of
course, Mr Micawber. He never fails you."


                           Illustrations
======================================================================
As is the custom for a regular serialised publication for a wide
audience, 'David Copperfield', like Dickens's earlier novels, was from
the beginning a "story in pictures" whose many engravings are part of
the novel and how the story is related.


Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz)
=============================
Phiz drew the original, the first two illustrations associated with
'David Copperfield': on the wrapper for the serial publication, for
which he engraved the silhouette of a baby staring at a globe,
probably referring to the working title ('The Copperfield Survey of
the World as it Rolled'), and the frontispiece (later used in the
published books), and the title page. The green wrapper is shown at
the top of this article. Phiz drew the images around the central
baby-over-the-globe with no information on the characters who would
appear in the novel. He knew only that it would be a bildungsroman.
The images begin at the bottom, on the left side of the tree that has
leaves on the left, and is dead on the right. A woman holds a baby on
her lap. The images continue clockwise, marking events of a life, but
with no reference to any specific event or specific character of the
novel.

When each issue was written, Phiz then worked with Dickens on the
illustrations. "In the monthly plates, Phiz would have to translate
the memories of the protagonist-narrator into a third-person objective
or dramatic point of view." Some of his illustrations contain details
that are not in the text, but illuminate a character or situation,
"forming part of [...] of what the novel is". Dickens accepted and
even encouraged these additional, sometimes subtle indications, which,
commenting on the event, say more than the narrator says in print. The
latter intends to stay behind, just like the author who, thus, hides
behind the illustrator.

Dickens was particularly scrupulous about illustrations; he
scrutinised the smallest details and sometimes demanded modifications,
for example to replace for a very particular episode the coat that
David wears by "a little jacket". The illustration of the meeting
between David and Aunt Betsey was particularly delicate, and Phiz had
to do it several times, the ultimate choice being that of Dickens.
Once the desired result was obtained, Dickens does not hide his
satisfaction: the illustrations are "capital", he writes to Phiz, and
especially that which depicts Mr Micawber in chapter 16, "uncommonly
characteristic".

One puzzling mismatch between the text and accompanying illustrations
is that of the Peggotty family's boat-house "cottage" on the Yarmouth
sands (pictured). It is clear from the text that the author envisaged
the house as an upright boat, whereas the illustrator depicted it as
an upturned hull resting on the beach with holes cut for the doors and
windows. Interior illustrations of the cottage also show it as a room
with curved ceiling beams implying an upturned hull. Although Dickens
seemed to have had the opportunity to correct this discrepancy he
never did, suggesting that he was happy with the illustrator's
depiction.


Other illustrators
====================
'David Copperfield' was later illustrated by many artists later, after
the serialization, including:
* Fred Barnard (1846-1896), who illustrated 'David Copperfield' in the
Household Edition by Chapman & Hall in the 1870s;
* Kyd (Joseph Clayton Clarke) (1855-1937);
* Harold Copping (1863-1932), who illustrated Dickens stories for
children;
* Frank Reynolds (1876-1953);
* Jessica Willcox Smith (1863-1935) who has illustrated many
abbreviated editions for children.
* Charles Keeping (1924-1988) who illustrated the complete works of
Dickens for the Folio Society.

Some of these works are fullsize paintings rather than illustrations
included in editions of the novels. Kyd painted watercolours. Frank
Reynolds provided the illustrations for a 1911 edition of David
Copperfield.

Although the reputation of Dickens with literary critics went through
a decline and a much later rise after he died, his popularity with
readers followed a different pattern after his death. Around 1900, his
novels, including 'David Copperfield', began an increase in
popularity, and the 40-year copyrights expired for all but his latest
novels, opening the door to other publishers in the UK; by 1910 all of
them had expired. This created the opportunity for new illustrators in
new editions of the novels, as both Fred Barnard (Household Edition)
and Frank Reynolds (1911 edition of 'David Copperfield') provided, for
example; their styles were different from that of Phiz who provided
the illustrations for the first publications of the novel in 1850 and
during the author's life. As the books were read by so many (one
publisher, Chapman & Hall, sold 2 million copies of Dickens's
works in the period 1900-1906), the characters became more popular for
use outside the novels, in jigsaw puzzles and postcards. Uriah Heep
and Mr Micawber were popular figures for illustrations. As World War I
approached, the illustrations on postcards and the novels, abridged or
full length, continued in popularity in the UK and among the soldiers
and sailors abroad.


Publishing contract
=====================
Like 'Dombey and Son', 'David Copperfield' was not the subject of a
specific contract; it followed the agreement of 1 June 1844, which was
still valid. In that contract, the publishing house Bradbury and Evans
received a quarter of the receipts from what Dickens wrote for the
next eight years. This did not prevent the novelist from criticizing
his publisher, or providing an incomplete number, just "to see exactly
where I am" and for his illustrator Phiz to have "some material to
work on".


Dedication and preface
========================
The 1850 book, published by Bradbury and Evans, was dedicated to the
honourable Mr and Mrs Richard Watson, from Rockingham,
Northamptonshire, aristocratic friends met on a trip to Switzerland
five years ago. A brief preface was written in 1850 by the author,
already entrusted to Forster after he finished his manuscript, with
the promise that a new work will follow. This text was also used for
the 1859 edition, the Cheap Edition. The ultimate version of 1867,
also called the Charles Dickens edition, included another preface by
the author with the statement that 'David Copperfield' is the
favourite work of the author.


Other editions
================
Three volumes were published by Tauchnitz in 1849-50, in English, for
distribution outside Great Britain in Europe. During Dickens's
lifetime, many other editions were released, and many since he died.
According to Paul Schlicke, the most reliable edition is the 1981
edition from Clarendon Press with an introduction and notes by Nina
Burgis; it serves as a reference for later editions, including those
of Collins, Penguin Books and Wordsworth Classics.


List of editions
==================
*1850, UK, Bradbury & Evans, publication date 14 November 1850,
bound (first edition), 624 pages, 38 plates.
*1858, UK, Chapman & Hall and Bradbury & Evans, publication
date 1858, hardback, 'Library Edition', 515 pages.
*1867, UK, Wordsworth Classics, Preface by the author (the "Charles
Dickens edition", with his statement "But, like many fond parents, I
have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is DAVID
COPPERFIELD.")
*1962 (reprinted 2006 with an afterword by Gish Jen) US, Signet
Classics . Includes passages deleted for the original monthly serial,
and unrestored in subsequent editions.
*1981 (reprinted 2003) UK, Oxford University Press , hardback, edited
by Nina Burgis, The Clarendon Dickens, 781 pages.
*1990, USA, W W Norton & Co Ltd , publication date 31 January
1990, hardback (Jerome H. Buckley (Editor), Norton Critical Edition -
contains annotations, introduction, critical essays, bibliography and
other material).


Earliest adaptations
======================
While it was being published, 'David Copperfield' was the object,
according to Philip Bolton's survey, of six initial dramatisations,
followed by a further twenty when the public's interest was at its
peak in the 1850s. The first adaptation, 'Born with a Caul' by George
Almar, was staged while the serial issues were not yet completed, with
some changes from Dickens's plot, having Steerforth live and marry
Emily, and inventing a character to kill Mr Murdstone. The most
spectacular dramatisation, however, were those of Dickens himself.
Although he waited more than ten years to prepare a version for his
public readings, it soon became one of his favourite performances,
especially the storm scene, which he kept for the finale, "the most
sublime moment in all the readings".


Fiction
=========
* Barbara Kingsolver's 2022 novel, 'Demon Copperhead', closely
parallels the events, characters, and moral trajectory of Dickens'
novel but is set in late-twentieth-century/early-twenty-first-century
Appalachia.


Radio
=======
*'Favourite Story', hosted by Ronald Colman - 25 October 1947
*'Theater Guild on the Air' - 24 December 1950 with Richard Burton,
Boris Karloff, Flora Robson and Cyril Ritchard
*'The Personal History of David Copperfield' - BBC Radio 4, 1991 - a
ten-part series adapted by Betty Davies with Gary Cady as David
Copperfield, Miriam Margolyes, John Moffatt, Timothy Spall and Sheila
Hancock
* Performed unabridged on Audible by Richard Armitage 2018


Film and TV
=============
*1911: 'David Copperfield', silent film directed by Theodore Marston
*1913: 'David Copperfield', silent film directed by Thomas Bentley
*1922: 'David Copperfield', silent film directed by A. W. Sandberg
*1935: 'David Copperfield', a film directed by George Cukor, featuring
W. C. Fields
*1956: 'David Copperfield', a 13-part TV serial shown on BBC. No
recordings are known to exist.
*1966: 'David Copperfield', a 13-part TV serial. Only four of the
thirteen episodes are known to exist.
*1969: 'David Copperfield', a TV film directed by Delbert Mann
*1974: 'David Copperfield', a 6-part TV serial directed by Joan Craft
*1983: 'David Copperfield', an animated film by Burbank Films
Australia
*1986: 'David Copperfield', a 10-part TV serial directed by Barry
Letts, shown on BBC
*1993: 'David Copperfield', animated TV film, shown on NBC
*1999: 'David Copperfield', a 2-part TV serial shown on BBC
*2000: 'David Copperfield', a TV film directed by Peter Medak
*2019: 'The Personal History of David Copperfield', a film directed by
Armando Iannucci


                              See also
======================================================================
* Letters of Charles Dickens


                            Bibliography
======================================================================
Books
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*
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Journals
*
*
*
*
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*
*
*

Letters written by Charles Dickens

'Letters', cited by recipient and date in the References, are found in
the Pilgrim edition, published in 12 volumes, from 1965 to 2003.
*


                           External links
======================================================================
Online editions
* [https://bookwise.io/charles-dickens/david-copperfield David
Copperfield read online at Bookwise]
*
*
[https://archive.org/stream/personalhistoryo00dickiala#page/n9/mode/2up
'David Copperfield'] at Internet Archive. Edition by Chapman &
Hall with preface by the author, and 40 illustrations by Phiz.
*
* [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/766 'David Copperfield'] at
Project Gutenberg.
*
[https://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/c/charles-dickens-david-copperfield/
'David Copperfield'] - The original manuscript of the novel, held by
the Victoria and Albert Museum (requires Adobe Flash).
* [https://www.bartleby.com/307/ 'David Copperfield'], at Bartleby.com
(HTML w/ additional commentary)
*
* [https://www.bartleby.com/307/1007.html List of over 50 characters.]

Adaptations
* [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60194162-demon-copperhead 2022
'Demon Copperhead'] a loose American modern adaptation of the novel,
set in Appalachia, by Barbara Kingsolver
*
[https://archive.org/download/TheaterGuildontheAir/Tgoa_50-12-24_ep055-David_Copperfield.mp3
1950 'Theatre Guild on the Air' radio adaptation] at Internet Archive
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWKRSZ7c0qk 1947 'Favourite Story'
radio adaptation] at YouTube


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