David Copperfield
Charles Dickens called David Copperfield his favorite of his own children, and the 1850 novel remains one of the founding texts of the modern bildungsroman. David is born after his father's death, raised tenderly by his mother and the formidable nursemaid Peggotty, then handed over to the cruel new stepfather Mr. Murdstone, sent to a brutal school, orphaned by his mother's early death, and put to work in a London bottle factory at the age of ten. He runs away to his eccentric great-aunt Betsey Trotwood, becomes a parliamentary reporter and then a novelist, navigates the disastrous beauty Dora and the steady Agnes, and looks on as Uriah Heep tries to ruin everything he loves. Dickens fills the book with characters who walked into the language permanently. Generous, funny, heartbreaking, and the most autobiographical novel he ever wrote.
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Dickens follows orphan-by-stages David Copperfield from his Suffolk boyhood through cruel schools, a Murdstone stepfather, factory labor in London, and adulthood as a writer, with friends Steerforth, Micawber, and Peggotty.
David Copperfield is fictional but heavily autobiographical. Charles Dickens drew on his own childhood experiences in a blacking factory, his early career as a parliamentary reporter, and his marriage to Catherine Hogarth.
Reading David Copperfield first deepens the parallels in Barbara Kingsolver's modern retelling Demon Copperhead, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. Demon Copperhead also stands on its own without reading Dickens first.
David Copperfield was written by Charles Dickens, published in 1800 by Niv.
David Copperfield is 742 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, David Copperfield takes most readers 11 to 16 hours to finish.
David Copperfield is a standalone novel by Charles Dickens, not part of a series.
David Copperfield is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
