David Copperfield

David Copperfield tells the story of its narrator’s life from birth through hard-won maturity. Orphaned young, sent to a brutal boarding school, and put to work in a London warehouse as a child, David eventually escapes to find refuge with his eccentric great-aunt Betsey Trotwood. From there he makes his way through school, an ill-advised first marriage, and a writing career, encountering along the way some of the most memorable characters in all of fiction — the eternally optimistic Mr. Micawber, the humble and sinister Uriah Heep, and the steadfast Agnes Wickfield.

Published in serial form between 1849 and 1850, David Copperfield was Charles Dickens’s personal favorite among his novels. “Of all my books,” he wrote, “I like this the best.” The reason is not hard to find: Dickens drew heavily on his own childhood, including his traumatic experience working in a blacking factory while his father was imprisoned for debt. The novel transforms that pain into art with extraordinary vividness.

The book is Dickens at the peak of his powers — comic, sentimental, and deeply humane. Its episodic structure, following David from childhood through adulthood, allows Dickens to range across the whole of English society, from the mud of the Thames to the drawing rooms of Canterbury. The result is both an unforgettable personal story and a panoramic portrait of Victorian England.