David Copperfield: Charles Dickens

Dickens`s great coming-of-age novel, now in a beautiful clothbound Penguin edition

This is the novel Dickens regarded as his `favourite child` and is considered his most autobiographical. As David recounts his experiences from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist, Dickens draws openly and revealingly on his own life. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters are Rosa Dartle, Dora, Steerforth, and the `umble Uriah Heep, along with Mr Micawber, a portrait of Dickens`s own father which evokes a mixture of love, nostalgia and guilt.
Dickens`s great Bildungsroman (based, in part, on his own boyhood) is a work filled with life, both comic and tragic.

Charles Dickens (1812-70) had his first, astounding success with his first novel The Pickwick Papers and never looked back. In an extraordinarily full life he wrote, campaigned and spoke on a huge range of issues, and was involved in many of the key aspects of Victorian life, by turns cajoling, moving and irritating. He completed fourteen full-length novels and volume after volume of journalism. Of all his many works, he called David Copperfield his `favourite child`.
Jeremy Tambling is Professor of Literature at the University of Manchester.