David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
(original title: “The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery”)

5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What can I say about this magnificent work that has not been said before?

One have to be aware that this book was written 173 years ago.

It was published as a serial or periodical between May of 1849 and November of 1850, and then as a book in 1850.

Charles Dickens is one of my favourite authors, but I confess that only recently I started re-reading his works in the original language (I started with “Tales of Two Cities”, then “Great Expectations” and “Oliver Twist”, so I do have a long way to go).

I read his books translated into Portuguese over 40 years ago, and I believe that those books were abridged - I could be wrong, but I doubt very much.

I always felt envious of people complaining that Dickens was an assignment at school. As I grew up in Brazil, in my time we were only required to read Brazilian or Portuguese literature (and there are plenty of wonderful Brazilian classics).

Anyways… back to Dickens…

This book wordy and long. And it does feel long.

I have several free editions as in e-books (Apple Books, Kindle & Kobo) as well as two different audiobooks, one narrated by Richard Armitage (and how formidable that is! But only available on Audible) plus a hardcover and a paperback.
I kept switching editions just to see the difference on my progress.
The progress in percentage seemed never to change. Now, as for the hardcover, it was a pleasure seeing those pages flipping and “feel” how much I had progressed.

The writing is terrific and so is the development of the storyline.

This is a story that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the main character, from childhood to adulthood.

It’s said that David Copperfield is also an autobiographical novel, with events following Dickens's own life.

This novel, as in “Great Expectations”, was written fully in first person narrative. And the storytelling is very engaging, which makes everything feel so real and believable. Plus the characters are very rich and interesting, although not all very likeable.

Thanks to the writing, I was easily transported to that era (Victorian England).
There are some heart breaking moments, as well as a good number of humour.

This is a book to be enjoyed in slow paces, as it was meant back then. A bit today, a bit more tomorrow, but I wanted to read it at once, if I could.

My favourite parts were the first 30% and the last 20% of the book.

My next re-read will be either Bleak House (published after this one) or Hard Times, my top 2 favourite books by Dickens.

Now I’m going to re-watch one of those adaptations for the TV, the 1999 production directed by Simon Curtis, with Daniel Radcliffe as young Copperfield, Maggie Smith as Betsey Trotwood, and Nicholas Lyndhurst as Uriah Heep (I do own a collection of DVDs of TV series adapted from Dickens’ books).

Hardcover (Barnes & Nobles Collector’s Library): 1263 pages (edited by Trevor Blount and original illustrations by H. K. Browne)

Paperback (Penguin Books): 957 pages (1966 edition with original illustrations by H. K. Browne, and introduction and notes by Trevor Blount - reprinted in 1985 by Penguin Classics)

E-book, Kobo (Penguin Classics): 1476 pages (default), 401k words (with original illustrations by H. K. Browne)

Audiobook (Audible), narrated by Richard Armitage: 36h31min (normal speed).

I had originally rated it 4 stars. Reading in English was much better, hence the extra star.

PS. There are several free editions of audiobooks and ebooks available, but not all include the illustrations, foreword, introduction or glossary.
When it comes to classics, I trust Penguin and Oxford University Press.

4+ stars. Charles Dickens has an amazing (if long-winded) way with words.

We follow David Copperfield from his very youngest days as a baby, through boyhood (featuring his childlike mother and cruel stepfather), school days (starring opposite friends Steerforth and Traddles), unhappy child worker, falling in love with a lovely but frustratingly dim young lady (echoes of his mother), and young manhood.

A few of the characters in this semi-autobiographical novel are Victorian stereotypes, but others fairly leap off the page—wonderful Aunt Betsey and loyal Traddles were two of my favorites.

Full review to come!

May/June 2020 group read with the Dickensians! group. The discussion threads are amazing. Somehow I bypassed this one when I was a college English major, so I’m rectifying that omission now.

So that was fun... eventually.. sortof. What was the population of england circa 1850? Based on the number of times people randomly crossed paths in this book i'm guessing it couldn't have been higher than 200 :P .
The first quarter of the story is like a watered down version of Wuthering Heights. In fact the whole book feels a bit watered down. There's a constant darkness lurking about but dickens never commits to it which makes it feel like he's playing safe.
On the other hand whenever one of his ridiculous characters turns up they feel out of place as the story seems too dark and serious for them.
Also the entire plot is told from the point of view of a single character which robs it of the variety of some of his other stories. This tactic does have an upside though. Since our protagonist is rather innocent the reader often figures out things which the character doesn't yet know. This builds up the suspense as we wait to see if our surmises are right. However this trick does rather backfire during the conclusion.
The conclusion feels like it takes forever (there are 9 chapters which i would all consider to be conclusion) and the trick i've mentioned adds to the length as even the most dense of readers will know more or less how things will work out. Those last few chapters were the only ones which really tried my patience.
Despite the silly coincidences and some rather poor plotting there's still a lot of nice things here. I really felt i was getting into a groove with the story around page 1000 or so, although that may have been the Stockholm Syndrome kicking in ;) .

Overall an unobjectionable story.. except unobjectionable isn't really worth 2000 pages of reading in my opinion, so i've deducted a star.

It's taken me years to finally finish a second Charles Dickens novel. Since I was preparing to read Barbara Kingsolver's "Demon Copperhead" I felt it appropriate to read the source material. It's solid bildungsroman- a rags to riches story that is both charming and harrowing.

I write harrowing because Dickens is always excellent at crafting atmosphere- especially dark, dreary ones that depict child neglect and abuse, poverty, gloomy factories, and the darkness of the London fog that permeates. I tend to think of the musicals "Oliver!" and "Sweeney Todd" when I read Dickens- and this was the sensibility I picked up on upon reading "Great Expectations" years ago; or when I've seen film variations on "A Christmas Carol".

David Copperfield's mother Clara dies, and he is at the mercy of his awful stepfather Mr. Murdstone and step-aunt Mrs. Murdstone. David comes of age- from a schoolboy, to a factory worker. He marries twice to the immature Dora, and later marries the faithful Agnes. His childhood surrogate mother Peggoty is part of his coming of age, as well as his aunt, Betsey Trotwood- the dowager who changes his life forever. She's the polar opposite of the cruel Miss Havisham from "Great Expectations" and I see how Mrs. Trotwood and Miss Havisham are parallel cousins in the Dickens universe.

Overall, it's an enjoyable yarn, of dark streets, selfish cads like James Steerforth; selfless lads like Tommy Traddles, and Mr. Micabwer, and little innocent girls like Emily, who can be seen as a lamb to the slaughter. I felt it slogged a bit in the beginning, and during the midst of its exposition. I am certainly glad I finally read this classic.

I have a bookcase in my study, displaying some artefacts of my immediate ancestors and from my own childhood.

Arrayed neatly on the shelves are a few of my grandfather’s and father’s engineering texts (mechanical and electrical respectively) grandfather’s leather-cased measuring tape, dad’s slide rule and my mother's schoolgirl cartoon drawings, from the thirties. Plus my Biggles books and a hardback copy of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield.

I used to have such things in boxes, but my good lady wife said; ‘Why not put them out on display?’ So I did. Wise to take heed.

One evening long ago, my dad drove into the carport after work, opened his briefcase (one of my lasting childhood memories is the smell of his newspaper coming from the open bag), and handed me a 1961 reprint of a 1952 (Collins) edition of David Copperfield.

I was nine years old, ten at the most.

I was not nearly ready to read it then and I never did, until now, much, much later. I am a latecomer to literature. My wife learned recently about this paternal gift and said: ‘You have to read it.’ I mentioned this in a Goodread’s review, which a little later prompted a direct question from one of my friends: ‘Have you read David Copperfield yet?’ Note to self: if you say something on Goodreads that smacks of an undertaking, you had better deliver. So I read it. Just finished.

It has been quite my most satisfying reading experience for some time, certainly since Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, which interestingly also has a strong boy to manhood motif. Come to think of it, I also really liked Kipling’s Kim for much the same reason. David Copperfield has an absorbing narrative, of David’s progress over thirty years and it’s full of beautifully drawn characters, many of whom change and grow before our eyes, for better or worse. It’s immensely satisfying to be involved with characters worthy of our support, interest or devotion, but also those who raise our apprehension or merit our poor opinion.

I have rarely encountered an author so sure footed at supplying emotion and temperament through words and action, or through the clever view of the narrator, in this case David Copperfield himself. Having the narrator David, writing as an adult, spend so much time with himself as a boy, gives us the boy’s experience. It tells us of his early affections and affiliations, for his mother, for Peggotty and for the young Agnes Wickfield; but also his foreboding and anguish at the Murdstones, his wariness of Uriah Heep. Young David can be perceptive beyond his years: witness the account of his mother and Peggotty being scared of aunt Betsey Trotwood. Nevertheless he perceives something kind about his aunt which leads him to seek her out when he runs away from Salem House School: his journey from London to Dover to find her is one of the most vivid in the story.

Apart from the loss of his father before he was born the first dark cloud in his life is the advent of the Murdstones. Jane Murdstone moves in after David’s mother marries Mr Murdstsone:

It was Miss Murdstsone who was arrived, and a gloomy–looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account.

Not an appealing description, which is what Dickens does so well, like when he talks later about Uriah Heep writhing and twisting in paroxysms of ‘umbleness. Meanwhile Dickens goes on to describe Miss Murdstone’s luggage, to hammer home the point:

She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm in a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstsone was.

Incidentally, this is a splendid illustration of what David Lodge talks about in The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts. Dickens is masterly at repetition, (‘hard’), and using the sound of words to convey personal hardness, viz: ‘nails’, ‘brass’, ‘steel’, ‘chain’ and then short sharp words with edge ie ‘jail’, ‘shut’ and ‘bite’. Very clever.

I have a son, who is eight and a half years old, the exact age of David Copperfield at the beginning of the story, which make me think there a was a good cosmic reason for me reading the tale at this time rather than earlier, when the significance of my circumstances would have been less or non-existent. A child’s view of the world is very particular: in my observation children are often perceptive about what is going on, including how people feel and their motivations. An eight year old child can have a clear idea of the truth. Whether my boy could do the London to Dover run by himself I doubt, but Dickens manages to put himself into the head of an eight year old boy.

David is, however, sometimes blind to charm, notably towards the older boy Steerforth, his idol at Salem House School. Steerforth can do no wrong, until he reveals his class-based snobbery, when David suggests Steerforth would be delighted to see Mr Peggotty’s household. Steerforth responds: ‘Should I?...It would be worth a journey… to see that sort of people together, and to make one of ‘em.’ (p278, emphasis mine). This rings a small jarring note in David’s head; and of course ours.

The book is about a boy’s changing fortunes and his growth in understanding and experience as he makes his way throughout a tumultuous childhood and advances to adulthood, employment and adventure and finally, family responsibility. On the way he gets a horrible step father, is sent to a concentration camp of a school after biting the horrible step father (‘Take care of him. He bites.’ p87) and loses his mother early.

His emotional nanny Peggotty is made of the right stuff and so is her brother. David asks Little Em’ly about Dan Peggotty and suggests to her that he must be very good:

'Good?’ said Em’ly. ‘If I was ever to be a lady, I’d give him a sky blue coat with diamond buttons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a cocked hat, a large gold watch, a sliver pipe and a box of money.’ (p49)

This sets up later events: Emily’s seduction by James Steerforth, with the implicit understanding that he would make her a ‘lady’, and establishes the outstanding character which underpins Dan Peggotty’s later quest to find her again after she is gone.

David Copperfield is also romantic. I was intrigued to speculate as to who David was going to end up with (little Emily Miss Larkins, Agnes or Dora). Along the way, of course, he gets some marriage jaundice from his Aunt and Miss Mills, but to her credit Miss Mills sets that aside to urge our hero and her friend to get it together. Miss Mills to David and Dora:

‘Mr Copperfield and Dora,’ said Miss Mills, with an almost venerable air. ‘Enough of this. Do not allow a trivial misunderstanding to wither the blossoms of spring, which, once put forth and blighted, cannot be renewed…’ (p447)

After David realises that his lovable, simple wife Dora is not going to gain any useful accomplishments and more significantly, is not going to provide the support a partner needs for the marriage journey, Mrs Strong, the pretty young wife of the scholarly old teacher Dr Strong, talks of a childhood relationship with her cousin Jack Maldon, and reflects:

‘There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’ And a little later: ‘There is nothing,’ said Annie, that we [Jack Maldon and I] have in common. I have long found that there is nothing. If I were thankful to my husband for no more, instead of for so much, I should be thankful to him for having saved me from the first mistaken impulse of my undisciplined heart.’ (p605)

This is a profound sentiment, beautifully expressed, worth savouring: ‘the first mistaken impulse of my undisciplined heart’. David is maturing, beyond his time and years. For the narrative to work and for him to end up with Agnes, where he should end up, something must be done about Dora, and Dickens has her simply fade away and die of an unspecified malady, but not before she anoints her successor. Bit cynical I thought, but acceptable in the context of the story and the times. David did not treat Dora badly, the opposite in fact – he gained the wisdom that Mr Murdstsone never achieves, by accepting his consort for who and what she was. Just fortunate she was sickly.

Speaking of the Murdstones, you just know they are going to turn up after their initial appearance and indeed, one of the charms of David Copperfield is the way characters come and go -there are no wasted personnel in Dickens: we get multiple and enjoyable doses of Steerforth, the Micawbers, Tommy Traddles, even Mr Creakle, the nasty overseer of Salem House School, returns as the overseer of a ‘modern’ penitentiary. I wondered why David and Traddles were visiting this establishment. The penny drops when they meet prisoners 27 and 28, Uriah Heep and Littimer, two proper bastards who absolutely deserve incarceration. This contributes to the deep satisfaction which comes from the good people working out OK, pretty much, Micawbers included, and the bad people getting what they deserve: Murdstones, Steerforths, Rosa Dartle, accepting that there are casualties along the way: Ham Peggotty and Little Emily for example.

There are heroes and there is Mr Peggotty, hero among heroes. Mr Peggotty speaks with Mrs Steerforth after he has started his search for his adopted daughter Emily, gone away with Steerforth and whereabouts unknown. Mrs Steerforth has just dismissed out of hand the possibility of a marriage as entirely unsuitable and ruinous of her son’s prospects. She hints at compensation and Mr Peggotty responds:

‘I am looking at the likeness of the face,’ interrupted Mr Peggotty, with a steady but kindling eye, ‘that has looked at me, in my home, at my fireside, in my boat – wheer not? – smiling and friendly, when it was so treacherous, that I go half wild when I think of it. If the likeness of that face don’t turn to burning fire, at the thought of offering money to me for my child’s blight a ruin, it’s as bad. I doen’t know, being a lady’s, but what it’s worse.’ (p433)

And the unexpected heroine: Betsey Trotwood. Initially severe and always blunt, she has a profound sense of duty. She gives it to the Murdstones about poor David’s dead mother, after David has run away to find his aunt and begged her to keep him rather than give him back to the Murdstones:

‘Mr Murdstone,’ she said, shaking her finger at him, ‘you were a tyrant to the simple baby, and you broke her heart. She was a loving baby-I know that; I knew it years before you ever saw her- and through the best part of her weakness you gave her the wounds she died of. There is the truth for your comfort, however you like it. And you and your instruments make the most of it.’ (p207)

There is, of course, and relievedly so, a happy ending, although for some reason I imagined Agnes Wickfield as looking like a real person, Olivia de Havilland, not from her Errol Flynn period, but more like she was in Gone with the Wind; serene, self-sacrificing, smart, sweet and good.

When you read an old book, and smell the pages, the physical volume comes alive, the pages breathe and the action of turning them makes the dust disappear. The memory of my father comes through as well, speaking to me over the years. He always put stuff in front of me, to see whether I would take to it. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes it took a long time.

I will remember this lesson for my own eight year old David Copperfield.

-Ian’s Book of the Year 2015

Rilettura di un classico che ho sempre amato e che ritengo una delle prove più riuscite di Dickens. In quest'opera, la sua capacità di mantenere viva l'attenzione del lettore per centinaia e centinaia di pagine e di creare personaggi di spessore e caratteristiche tali da divenire quasi piccole icone della narrativa, raggiunge livelli altissimi. Forse alcune scene risentono di un patetismo non infrequente nei romanzi dell'epoca, ma ciò non inficia il risultato finale e passa quasi inosservato. Anche Dickens non ha fatto mai mistero di amare il Copperfield: forse perché più ancora che in altri suoi romanzi è riuscito a rendere viva la società dell'epoca nelle sue luci come nelle sue ombre.

…i didn’t love this?! I’m concerned for my own wellbeing…

I picked up this book in a bookstore (if you can believe it), not really thinking I'd buy such a big pile of pages in classical English, figuring it would bore the hell out of me.

I read the first page.

I then proceeded to the counter, and bought it.

This is the beginning of my love story with "David Copperfield", an absolute favorite. It takes a particular mindset to read it I think, so it took me a while to finish it, matching my reading moments with that mindset as much as possible. You need a romantic side and you need to be able to get in touch with it in order to enjoy this book, but if you give this tale a chance, it will nurture that sensitive side and make you get tears of joy.

This book is a biography of a wonderful, semi-fictional person, David Copperfield, whose ordeals and adventures are based on those experienced by Charles Dickens. David's thoughts are generous and because this book is written from his perspective, everything he describes around him is depicted in their best possible light. The world is such a nice place through his eyes, even in the most dreary situations of poverty, abandonment and death of loved ones. Plenty of songs of happiness and love are sung in this book, but like in every life, there is not just that. Sadness, death, loss, heartache become beautiful because of their purity and their core of warmth, a warmth so well expressed in this book. Betrayal and jealousy become even uglier when put next to the purer feelings.

It hasn't always been an easy read. Some passages are rather slow and a rare couple of segments that were meant to be funny have somehow lost their edge (most humourous instances still retain their power over your mouth corners and unshaken belly, though. They will yield, I assure you!). The local dialects in which some of the protagonists speak sometimes make it very difficult to understand for a non-native English speaker like myself.

I have read this book with a little notebook next to me to take down the most memorable quotes. It was difficult not to just simply copy entire pages at times. Here are some of my favorite quotes -who are really stories in themselves- which show the timeless humour and the great pen of an author who has shown that the most naive thing to be is to be anything but continuously amazed with the wonders all around you:

“Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you have, that while I know well what I am, I can be cheerful and endure it all. I am thankful for myself, at any rate, that I can find my tiny way through the world, without being beholden to anyone; and that in return for all that is thrown at me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can throw bubbles back.”

"Very much admired, indeed, the young woman was. What with her dress; what with the air and sun; what with being made so much of; what with this, that, and the other; her merits really attracted general notice."

"This country I am come to conquer! Have you honours? Have you riches? Have you posts of profitable pecuniary emolument? Let them be brought forward. They are mine!"

"Oh the river! I know it's like me! I know that I belong to it. I know that it's the natural company of such as I am! It comes from country places, where there was no harm in it - and it creeps through the dismal streets, defiled and miserable - and it goes away, like my life, to a great sea that is always troubled and I feel that I must go with it."

"If, any sunny forenoon, she had spread a little pair of wings and flown away before my eyes, I don't expect I should have regarded it as much more than I had had reason to expect."

"And if ever, in my life, I have had a void made in my heart, I had one made that day."

"I shall never forget the waking next morning; the being cheerful and fresh for the first moment, and then the being weighed down by the stale and dismal oppression of remembrance."

"It would be no pleasure to a London tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was."

"...and that she desired her compliments, which was a polite fiction on my part."

"When I woke next morning, I was resolute to declare my passion to Dora, and know my fate. Happiness or misery was now the question. There was no other question that I knew of in the world, and only Dora could give the answer to it."

"Love must suffer in this stern world; it ever had been so, it ever would be so. No matter. Hearts confined by cobwebs would burst at last, and then Love was avenged."

If you love Love, with the big L, you'll love this Book.

I acquired this book from my father's bookshelf. It was bought by my father in 1964 (oh how I love old books!). This book by Charles Dickens is definitely a masterpiece! Although the author has died long ago, but I believe that his books and novels still live within us because of their marvelous concept and breathtaking events. And David Copperfield is certainly not an exception. It is said that this book is a reflection of the author’s life and that makes it more meaningful I feel.

The story traces the life history of David from his childhood to his adulthood. Dickens tells the quintessential tale of growing up. He brought the most colourful cast of characters that have their own personalities, motives, interests and sense of humour. Through the story, David grows up. He learns about the world, love, and human nature. He witnesses the miracles of life, and the tragedies of death. In turn, I feel the readers learn about such things as well. We see the world clearly through David's eyes.

Even though the story is being narrated by an older and wiser David, the readers still experience events how David had experienced them the first time. The chapters where we observe David's childhood precisely allow us to see the environment through a child's trusting eyes. David is susceptible to making mistakes in life and being naive. He is a good and honorable person with a moral conscience, but he is just as susceptible to the vices of this world as everybody else. But this is part of growing up too, isn't it?

Overall, I liked it very much. I felt the atmosphere it was giving and there were deep characters, which really helped in the story. Definitely a must-read classic!

Dithering David, or: The Innocent Bystander

There may be spoilers in this review, and apart from that I have written it without summarizing its content and on the assumption that a reader already knows the events and people described herein. So if you want to read the novel without any previous knowledge, it is probably better to skip this review for the time being.

According to the author’s own testimony, David Copperfield, which he published between May 1849 and November 1850, was Dickens’s favourite child, and the reason for this may be the fact that Dickens here fell back on certain events from his own life in the telling of David’s story. This is not, in itself, so unusual since various characters in Dickens’s novels are based on people he knew from real life – just consider Mrs. Nickleby, who is to a certain degree the effigy of his mother, or the role that the debtors’ prison played in his novel Little Dorrit and even in his first major work of fiction, The Pickwick Papers. In David Copperfield, however, the biography of the protagonist has several close parallels with that of the writer himself, and he even unearthed his most dreaded childhood trauma, namely the four months he had to spend as a menial worker in Warren’s Blacking Factory – an experience that humiliated Dickens so much that he never spoke about it to his own wife and children, and it was only via David that Dickens could get this weight off his chest. Therefore, David Copperfield will surely afford special pleasure to dyed-in-the-wool-Dickensians in that they can feel invited to spot similarities between Dickens’s and David’s lives, e.g. in David’s unwise marriage with the empty-headed and spoilt Dora Spenlow, who seems to be modeled on Dickens’s former sweetheart Maria Beadnell.

Nevertheless, I could not enjoy Dickens’s favourite novel as much as I did enjoy Bleak House, Dombey and Son or Little Dorrit, and this has to do with the narrative perspective as well as with the protagonist, who constantly fails to stand up for those of his friends who need his support. There is Agnes Wickfield, his best friend from adolescent years, who is like a sister to him, and yet he allows the creepy Uriah Heep to web his net of deception around her and her father, David’s benefactor, instead of taking action against these machinations. He even does not interfere when Uriah makes it clear that he is, in fact, determined to force Agnes into matrimony, and when he notices that Agnes is quite on her own in fending off Uriah’s amorous ambitions, her father becoming more and more dependent on his former employee. David also lets Uriah have his way with Dr. Strong and his wife although the Doctor has been his friend and protector ever since his schooldays in Canterbury. He is also a mere spectator when Miss Rosa Dartle tortures Little Emily with her threats and her accusations although he could have ended that disgraceful scene by just stepping into the room. He furthermore ignores several letters coming from Mrs. Micawber in which she asks for his advice and help on behalf of her husband who is growing more and more sinister and secretive. He allows himself to be patronized and belittled by James Steerforth, whom he looks up to with eerie admiration, and he still seems to stand in awe of Steerforth after his former friend has shown his real face to him and brought ruin to a decent family. The only time that David ever actively does something out of the ordinary and when he shows pluck and determination is when he runs away from his factory job in London in order to implore his aunt to take care of him and to open up prospects in life for him that are more befitting to his middle class origins. David Copperfield may be seen as a Bildungsroman in that its protagonist rises in society through hard work and self-control – indeed Victorian virtues – but his growing maturity does not really show itself in its actions towards friends who are in need. Here he remains a mere observer so that it is difficult to detect any real moral growth in him.

This is probably because David Copperfield is told by the eponymous hero himself, as a first person narrator. It was Dickens’s first go at using a perspective different from the omniscient narrator in a large novel, and he must have felt the advantages – the density of the atmosphere, the charm that lies in the blending of the perspective of a child who is prone to wonder and exaggeration with the wider one of the narrator who actually tells the story against the background of all the experience he has gained since when he was a child; advantages which are most prominent in the first third of the novel – as well as the limitations, the major one being the fact that somehow David always had to be on the scene whenever something dramatic happens. This also accounts for his eavesdropping on Emily and Miss Dartle without interfering – a passiveness for which the narrator gives a rather lame excuse. In his next novel, Bleak House Dickens seems to have drawn his own conclusions from the limitations imposed by a first person perspective, and so we have two different narrators’ voices in that novel, one being a first person perspective, the other one a more ironic omniscient narrator.

The choice of the first person would also have made it awkward for Dickens to present David as an enterprising active hero because who likes a narrator that is blowing his own horn? Even the brilliant sleuth Sherlock Holmes normally leaves the story-telling to Dr. Watson, and if you want to know how cringeworthy a first person narrator hero of superhuman power can become, you would just have to read some adventure stories written by the German author Karl May. So, in a way, Dickens solved his problem rather decently, even if it was to the detriment of David Copperfield himself. And yet, there is a certain smugness about David that does not go down too well, and it is to be feared that here the author’s own voice is blending in. When he talks about his days as a factory worker, David leaves no doubt that he was head and shoulders above all the other workers and that even they were aware of it and kept themselves at a respectful distance. One wonders whether young Dickens had experienced the same respect from his co-workers or whether they had taken to making fun of him instead. David is furthermore always on the road to Smuggytown whenever he talks about his achievements or work as an author, and when he finally meets Dr. Chillip after many, many years, there is a toe-curling condescension about his taking such great pains to record the doctor’s admiration and intimidation in the presence of the great author. Neither can David help being condescending towards the best friend he probably ever had apart from his aunt, Traddles, who is infinitely more helpful in solving Agnes’s problem than David is. It is not very becoming in David to behave in such a patronizing way to the unassuming, yet efficient and sympathetic Traddles, when at the same time he is constantly kissing up to James Steerforth, who is such a bad and deceptive friend after all.

All in all, it is difficult to like David but luckily it is not necessary for enjoying the novel, which is cleverly constructed and seems to focus on the topic of marriage and family. It must be a very tricky task to write a fictional (auto)biography – unless one has recourse to the looser and more daredevil form of the picaresque – because a fictional autobiography is still a work of art and requires something like a premise and a theme to keep it all together, whereas a real biography can just try to make sense of the life that is being focused on without paying attention to the principle of artistic unity – it just has to make its point. In fact, David Copperfield seems to fall into three different parts, the most appealing one of which is the first one, where the narrator tells us about his early life. Here Dickens excels at language that makes us see the events from a child’s perspective, and at presenting a tale of lost bliss – thanks to the evil Murdstones –, hardships and a daring journey from London to Dover, undertaken by a timid child whose sole protector on his way is the presence of his late mother which, as he feels, gives him hope and strength. The second part of the novel, David’s youth, is still enthralling, last not least because of the menacing Uriah Heep and the sad tale of Little Emily. It is not until David has settled down as a married man and seen his first successes as an author that the novel begins to slacken – although even then there is the tragic comedy of David’s first marriage and the miracle of Dora’s becoming more and more loveable to the reader – at least, to me. Less of David’s soul-searching in those final chapters would have been more, though.

How now does Dickens knit these three parts together in order to make a unit of them? David’s own life, with the exception of his younger years, is not so interesting as to justify his telling us our story. As I already said, the novel plays on the theme of marriage and family, showing us all kinds of dysfunctional and some happy families. When Aunt Betsey and Peggotty sneer at the notion of ever getting married at all, there seems to be good proof of their being right in Betsey’s own past and in Mrs. Copperfield’s second marriage. There are also matrimonial problems for Dr. Strong and his wife, and then there is David’s rash marriage with Dora. Ironically, most of the so-called lower-class people seem to have happy marriages and family lives – as the Peggottys and even Uriah Heep and his mother, between whom there is genuine affection. Havoc seems to be lurking in the higher orders, and we can see the relationship between Steerforth and his mother, with their unflinching egoism and pride on both sides, as a mirror-image of the humbler couple Uriah and his mother, who seem to be happier with each other for all their villainy. There are many more parallels and links concerning this topic, and some fun can be derived from detecting them.

There are also some great characters, such as my personal hero Traddles, the grandiloquent Mr. Micawber, whose prose I most certainly admire, the excentric Aunt Betsey, the bitter Rosa Dartle, one of Dickens’s most complex female characters, or the slipshod Mrs. Crupp, David’s London landlady, who is redolent of good old Mrs. Gamp in many ways. Apart from that you can enjoy Dickens’s prose, especially in the scene of the storm or in the little vignette when David lists up his first love interests – picking up a Dickens novel is always entering a charmed world of plentiful imagination and vivid detail. It’s just that this time, Dickens was experimenting with a new perspective and was therefore not quite up to his usual standard. But it’s still way better than anything that is written today ;-)

What a lovely story! I am always interested in the way Dickens depicts so masterly the big difference between the living conditions of the rich and the poor! It reminds me that I should be more compassionate with people around me!

This is my third time reading David Copperfield and I loved it just as much this time as I did the first time I read it. This timeless masterpiece had me laughing and crying all the while it warmed my heart with its central theme of kindness.