David Copperfield (1850)

The perfect way to start the bicentennial of Dickens' birth, with his most autobiographical novel and also his own person favorite. Unfortunately, I re-read GK Chesterton�Ûªs essay on the novel before writing this note and found he captured my feelings exactly and better than I could have put them. To quote him, ‰ÛÏThe reason is that Dickens began it under his sudden emotional impulse of telling the whole truth about himself and gradually allowed the whole truth to be more and more diluted, until towards the end of the book we are back in the old pedantic and decorative art of Dickens, an art which we justly admired in its own place and on its own terms, but which we resent when we feel it gradually returning through a tale pitched originally in a more practical and piercing key. Here, I say, is the one real example of the fatigue of Dickens. He begins his story in a new style and then slips back into an old one.‰Û http://www.dickens-literature.com/Appreciations_and_Criticisms_by_G.K_Chesterton...

The novel begins, famously, with David Copperfield‰Ûªs birth told in the first person. The early chapters are a spectacular child‰Ûªs eye view on the large and imposing figures around him. The middle of the book is interspersed between more purely biographical episodes (descriptions of Doctor‰Ûªs Commons, learning shorthand), some instances of Dickens‰Ûª imagination at its best (Mr. Micawber), and some unnecessary but diverting side plots (Doctor Strong and his wife). In the end, autobiography is almost entirely gone, and we have an extended windup of a number of subplots. In a few places, these are outstanding‰ÛÓlike the confrontation of Uriah Heep and the death of Steerforth. In others, it is more forced with an almost offensive desire to resolve the most colorful and problematic characters through death or emigration to Australia. To quote Chesterton again, ‰ÛÏHaving created splendid beings for whom alone life might be worth living, he cannot endure the thought of his hero living with them. Having given his hero superb and terrible friends, he is afraid of the awful and tempestuous vista of their friendship. He slips back into a more superficial kind of story and ends it in a more superficial way.‰Û

None of which is to say David Copperfield is anything short of amazing, but it is well short of perfect. ( )

This is, of course, the life story -- the very detailed life story -- of Mr. David Copperfield, from his birth onwards, including his horrifically unhappy childhood, his romantic entanglements, and the doings of his various interesting friends.

It's definitely the characters that make this one enjoyable. Copperfield himself is carefully and believably drawn, and he knows a lot of entertainingly quirky people, many of whom turn out to have some interesting hints of depth underneath their quirks. I imagine I will be unlikely ever to forget Mr. Micawber, or Uriah Heep, or David's formidable, eccentric Aunt Betsy.

I'm not sure it has a plot, exactly, so much as a loose connection of subplots, but that's fine; they're decent enough subplots. It does all get a little melodramatic at the end, although I suppose for Dickens, it's probably pretty mild on that score. I do have to say, though, that Victorian ideas about women and relationships and marriage inevitably strike my modern sensibilities as weird and kind of creepy, which always puts a little uncomfortable distance between me and the characters in such novels, and this one doesn't really qualify as an exception.

It also goes on a bit too long. Not that this is the sort of book one picks up expecting a rollicking, fast-paced thrill ride. It's more the sort to immerse yourself in when you're looking to live somebody else's life for a while, and if you're rushing through it, you're probably doing it wrong. Still, I think I would have been happier with it if it were a couple hundred pages shorter. It doesn't help that Dickens has this habit of writing characters who tend to repeat themselves over and over. I don't know whether that's his attempt at naturalistic dialog, or whether it's the result of him trying to make a word count, but it does get annoying. Although, fortunately, either that eased off substantially by the middle of the book, or I'd gotten used to it enough by then that it stopped bugging me quite so much.

In the end, it's a book I am glad to have read, but also glad to finally be finished with. ( )

Well, I've always enjoyed Dickens anyway, with my favorite still being Great Expectations, but this story now comes in a close second :) The story of Copperfield's life, from the night he was born, to the stage in his life where he is finally settled & prosperous is an eventful one. Along the way he meets some interesting characters, like Mr. Micawber, & the 2 villains of the tale, Murdstone & Heep. He finds friends that are true, like Tradderly, & the Peggotty clan, & ones that are false, like the charismatic Steerforth. This story is nevr boring, always down to earth, & the characters approachable.

If you've never read Dickens, this is a good place to start :) ( )

I was thoroughly entertained by this and never found it a slog reading through its 800 plus pages--and that actually came as a surprise to me because I am by no means a Dickens fan. I decided to read this one because it's on the the list of 100 Significant Books I've been reading through--and because a friend told me that I should at least try this one before giving up on Dickens. This was actually his own favorite among his novels, and the one most autobiographical. Even knowing as little as I do of his life, I could certainly see plenty of parallels between the young Charles Dickens and David Copperfield. And especially given this was written in first person, this book has a confessional quality that drew me in and propelled me forward.

The thing is this novel I so enjoyed is guilty of every sin that so often drove me batty in Dickens: the rambling plot riddled with unlikely coincidences, the long, long length, the at times mawkish sentimentality, the phrases repeated again and again, the characterizations that often seemed more caricatures, and above all, the women characters that convince me Dickens thinks of the female gender as not quite human--or at least I felt so at first. David's mother Clara in particular drove me up the wall--I wanted to reach into the book and throttle her. It seemed to me in my reading of several of Dickens novels that his women run to four types or combinations and at first David Copperfield seemed no exception. There is the angelic creature who is often a victim, such as Clara, Little Em'ly, Agnes and Dora. There is the evil harridan such as Miss Murdstone or Rosa Dartle. There is the sacrificing Earth mother such as Peggoty. And finally, there is the (often rich) eccentric such as Betsy Trotwood. But ah, often the eccentric characters are so richly comic--and in the case of Trotwood there is more than initially met the eye--in fact I wasn't a third way through the novel before I loved her. And Agnes grew on me too. Not everyone's reaction--George Orwell, among others, despised the character. But she was the first female character who struck me as being a rational creature. But they're memorable--and not just the women. I don't think I'm ever going to forget Mr Micawber. I know I'll never forget Uriah Heep, the most odious, shudder-worthy villain I've met in literature.

So yes, after this book I got more of a sense of Dickens' charms. A Christmas Carol has been a favorite since childhood. And I did love Great Expectations--till the end, which I found a bit of a cheat. But I hated Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities. It's David Copperfield that's convinced me I should try more of Dickens. It was worth traversing its long and winding length. ( )

David Copperfield adores his sweet widowed mother and their servant Peggotty, and his early childhood passes easily in quiet contentment. However, when his mother marries her second husband, a cruel man named Edward Murdstone who is convinced that David is lazy and stupid. He eventually convinces the boy's mother to send the child away to a boarding school. There, David makes new friends and finds a hero in this classmate James Steerforth. His mother eventually gives birth to a son, but both she and the baby die soon afterward. Murdstone, not caring about David, ships him off to work for a wine merchant amidst miserable conditions. David eventually runs away to find his estranged aunt and begs her to allow him to stay with her; she agrees and helps David complete his education. But David's troubles do not end as he grows older as one tragedy after the next strike his friends and family.

Of all the novels of Charles Dickens, it's said that David Copperfield is the most autobiographical. Like his young protagonist, Dickens was raised in a middle-class household, but fell into poverty and had to leave school early to work. I think that this is part of the reason why the characters in the book are so well-portrayed. In only a few sentences, Dickens is able to present an entire personality and hint at a man's character and intentions. For example, on his way to London David eats a meal at an inn where the server tricks him into giving up most of his food and paying extra, besides. The waiter's scene lasts only a few pages, but his manipulative character and personable approach to fleecing poor David is very memorable.

The book was originally written as a serial, and this gave the novel a certain cadence and information is sometimes repeated multiple times. It's rather episodic, in fact, but even so the strong characterization and convoluted plot twists make it hard to put down. By the end of the long story, nearly every plot thread is resolved and neatly tied up, and the journey getting there proves very satisfying and fulfilling. ( )