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David Copperfield by Charles Dickens by…
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David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (original 1850; edition 2012)

by Charles Dickens

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20,557270209 (4.08)5 / 1351
Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML:

David Copperfield is considered to be Charles Dickens's most autobiographical novel. He said of it: "Like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield." It is a Bildungsroman, a tale which follows the development into maturity of its narrator, David Copperfield. The Russian greats Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky both greatly admired the novel, as did Kafka, Joyce and James. Freud called it his favourite novel.

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Member:SymphonySil
Title:David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Authors:Charles Dickens
Info:CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (2012), Paperback, 520 pages
Collections:Books read in 2013, Audiobooks from Fort Bend Library
Rating:*****
Tags:None

Work Information

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)

  1. 161
    A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (ncgraham)
  2. 100
    Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (aces)
  3. 50
    Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin (hazzabamboo)
    hazzabamboo: David Copperfield is partly autobiographical, and it's fascinating to compare it to Tomalin's fascinating, shrewd biography.
  4. 30
    Dickens' London by Charles Dickens (BINDINGSTHATLAST)
  5. 20
    Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (CGlanovsky)
    CGlanovsky: Bildungsroman
  6. 20
    The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (kara.shamy)
  7. 20
    Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (bothwa)
  8. 10
    A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (souloftherose)
    souloftherose: In A Tale of Two Cities Dickens reworked the ideas around self-sacrifice that he used in The Battle of Life into a full length novel
  9. 11
    A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (kara.shamy)
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» See also 1351 mentions

English (249)  Spanish (6)  Italian (3)  Dutch (2)  Swedish (1)  Greek (1)  Hungarian (1)  Portuguese (Portugal) (1)  German (1)  Portuguese (1)  Portuguese (Brazil) (1)  Catalan (1)  All languages (268)
Showing 1-5 of 249 (next | show all)
I do not think this is the strongest of Dickens' novels. While David Copperfield, the main character and only POV, does have a difficult and interesting life, to a point, it is also far too convenient. After his struggles as pre-teen, most things seem to work out very well for him, including his married life. As is usual with a Dickens story, often there are far too many unnecessary words. Several characters seem to exist only to pad the word count. This isn't terrible, but not Dickens' best either. ( )
  Karlstar | Mar 20, 2024 |
Such a brilliant bloomin' profusion of memorable and entertaining characters, it's both gratifying and a shame that everyone's fate wraps up in the end like a didactic grade school lesson. Sure, I'm happy that Mr. and Mrs. Micawber found wealth and honor at last in Australia, but the worthy gentleman was such a joy as the loquacious sad sack as likely to find himself in debtor's prison as anywhere, and his wife as the determinedly deluded champion of her husband's industrious talents. And it's no less deserved that Uriah Heep is last seen in prison, but his writhing false 'umbleness is much more fun when provoking the earnest and sincere Master Copperfield to acts of physical violence.

The outdated notions of women's "lost virtue" are hard to take at this remove, though the transformation of Mr. Peggotty from genial fisherman and drinker to driven and heartbreaking father trying every desperate measure to rescue his lost Emily is touching.

The less said about the character of Dora, David's utterly simplistic and self-appellated "child-wife" who conveniently wastes away of some unnamed disorder and dies so that he can realize the error of his young undisciplined heart and end up with the angelic Agnes, the better, although learning that Dickens modeled Dora after his own apparently much-regretted wife does introduce some juicy and evil gossip into the lamentable storyline (if Mrs. Dickens did not heartily dislike her husband at the time of 'David Copperfield' publication, she certainly had cause after it!)

So the novel has some problems, sure, but damn, Dickens could write, and he could create such characters as to make any author jealous.
---

"David Copperfield is the absolutely typical Dickens novel; maybe Dickens, the hammiest of all great writers, loved it best because it was just so him. But its very centrality makes it easy to overlook or take for granted. Compared to the early work, its miscalculations seem less understandable, its moralizing less tolerable; shouldn't he have known better by this time? Compared to the late work, it seems too merrily "Dickensian."

I don't know, am I making heavy weather of this? Shouldn't it be enough to remind folks that this novel, and no other, is the one with Uriah Heep and Mr. Micawber and Mr. and Miss Murdstone and Aunt Betsey and Peggoty and Steerforth and Mr. Dick and Rosa Dartle? No writer since Shakespeare could have put together such a cast of scene-stealers - as well as such supposedly minor characters as the respectable Littimer, the willin' Barkis, the lone and lorn Mrs. Gummidge, the Punch-like Mr. Spenlow and the volatile Miss Mowcher."
- from David Gates's introduction in the Modern Library edition
( )
  lelandleslie | Feb 24, 2024 |
In many ways, I found this novel delightful; it was the whimsical, parochial saga I had expected but failed to find in Middlemarch. Dickens definitely knows how to write characters. In other important ways, though, the novel was also a disappointment. In its efforts to reach resolution, it grew to feel interminable; this effect was exacerbated by the grating nature of the Micawbers, by whom Dickens seems particularly tickled. Far more interesting characters are relegated to the shadows of the Micawbers. While I imagine Dickens was writing too closely to the genre of autobiography to play fast and loose with the plot, I would have enjoyed spending more time with Ms. Dartle, Ms. Mowcher, Mr. Littimer, or even Steerforth, whose surface we barely scratch. Finally, the conclusion is too tidy in its treatment of loose ends, and the tidiness unfolds in too perfunctory a manner. ( )
  BeauxArts79 | Feb 23, 2024 |
I have loved this book since Mrs. Struyk, an English teacher of mine, read it aloud to our class. She was a wonderful reader, and we were enthralled, and didn't realize that she was dying of cancer at the time. A bildungsroman tale, it is filled with characters that we hope to encounter or avoid in life. When I was young, I wanted to be Betsy Trotwood -- and at this point, I may be rather like her!
( )
  maryelisa | Jan 16, 2024 |
A very readable epic tale about a young orphan and the rise and falls of his life. In the end it is a classic romance, but there is much comedy along the way. ( )
  LDVoorberg | Dec 24, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 249 (next | show all)
"David Copperfield" es una novela clásica de Charles Dickens, publicada por primera vez en forma de folletín entre 1849 y 1850. La novela está ampliamente considerada como la obra más autobiográfica de Dickens y refleja muchos elementos de su propia vida. Sigue la vida y las aventuras del personaje titular, David Copperfield, desde su infancia hasta la edad adulta.

La historia comienza con el nacimiento de David en Rookery, una zona degradada de Londres. Su padre muere antes de que él nazca, y su madre Clara se casa con el opresivo y cruel Sr. Murdstone. De pequeño, David es enviado a trabajar a una fábrica tras la muerte de su madre, experimentando las penurias del trabajo infantil.

A medida que David crece, la novela explora sus relaciones con diversos personajes, como el excéntrico señor Micawber, la bondadosa familia Peggotty y el embustero Uriah Heep. La narración abarca las experiencias de David en el internado, su carrera como vigilante y sus enredos amorosos.

A lo largo de la novela, los temas de la injusticia social, la disparidad de clases y la resistencia del espíritu humano se entretejen en la trama de la vida de David. Los personajes con los que se cruza, tanto amigos como enemigos, contribuyen a su crecimiento y desarrollo mientras intenta encontrar su lugar en el mundo.

"David Copperfield" es conocida por la riqueza de sus personajes, la vívida descripción de la sociedad victoriana y el humor y el comentario social característicos de Dickens. La novela sigue siendo una exploración atemporal de la condición humana, que capta los triunfos y las tribulaciones del viaje de un individuo desde la infancia hasta la madurez.
 
David Copperfield relates the story of his life - transmuting many of the early experience of his creator - right from his birth to his attainment of settled maturity and successful authorship. On his journey, David encounters a gallery of memorable characters, kind, cruel or grotesque: Mr Micawber, Uriah Heep and Steerforth are among the many who shape his development.

By turns absorbingly comic, dramatic, ironic and tender, the novel brings into energetic life the society and preoccupations of the mid-Victorian world
added by letonia | editPenguin Popular Classics
 

» Add other authors (217 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Dickens, Charlesprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Armitage, RichardNarratormain authorsome editionsconfirmed
Armitage, RichardNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Austen, JohnIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Blount, TrevorForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Boulton, NicholasNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Buck Jr., Philo MelvynEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Degen, PaulIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Filinto, JaimeTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ford, George H.Introductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Gunnarsson, JakobTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hill, JamesCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hughes, KathyrnIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Jarvis, MartinNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Johnson, EdgarAfterwordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Malden, R. H.Introductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
PhizIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Priestley, J. B.Introductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sanders, AndrewIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Sève, Peter deCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Smith, EdithEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Tambling, JeremyIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Thanner, JosefÜbersetzersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vance, SimonNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Wilson, MeganCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Winterich, John T.Introductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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Affectionately inscribed to the Hon. Mr and Mrs Richard Watson, of Rockingham, Northamptonshire
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Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
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I shall never desert Mr. Micawber.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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This is the main work for David Copperfield. It should not be combined with any adaptation, abridgement, student edition, etc. If this is your book but you have an abridged or adapted version, please update your title and ISBN, so that your book can be combined with the correct abridgement or adaptation.
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Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML:

David Copperfield is considered to be Charles Dickens's most autobiographical novel. He said of it: "Like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield." It is a Bildungsroman, a tale which follows the development into maturity of its narrator, David Copperfield. The Russian greats Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky both greatly admired the novel, as did Kafka, Joyce and James. Freud called it his favourite novel.

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Penguin Australia

4 editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia.

Editions: 0140439447, 0141031751, 0141199164, 0141343826

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