David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
52 Rating(s)
List: $8.99 | Sale: $6.30
Club: $4.49

David Copperfield
The Personal History, Experience and Observations of

Author: Charles Dickens

Narrator: B.J. Harrison

Unabridged: 39 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: B.J. Harrison

Published: 01/01/2013

Categories: Fiction, Classic


Synopsis

"The most perfect of all the Dickens novels." (Virginia Woolf)

David Copperfield is the tale of a boy who loses his parents at an early age, escapes the torturous conditions of working for his pitiless stepfather, and eventually determines to make something of himself. With a little luck and a lot of help along the way from some of the most colorful characters ever penned, David overcomes to achieve all for which he aspires. Featuring an unforgettable gallery of characters, including the cantankerous Miss Betsey, the merciless stepfather Mr. Murdstone, the obsequiously penniless Mr. Micawber, and the treacherous Uriah Heap, it is a tale so luxuriant in setting, so fabulous in character, and so pure in intent that though it was written 150 years ago, we still cheer with David during his triumph and weep with him in his suffering.

"Like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favorite child. And his name is David Copperfield." (From the preface by Charles Dickens)

About Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England, where his father was a naval pay clerk. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, near Rochester, another port town. He received some education at a small private school but this was curtailed when his father's fortunes declined.

When Dickens was ten, the family moved to Camden Town, and this proved the beginning of a long, difficult period. When he had just turned twelve, Dickens was sent to work for a manufacturer of boot blacking, where for the better part of a year he labored for ten hours a day, an unhappy experience that instilled him with a sense of having been abandoned by his family. Around the same time Dickens's father was jailed for debt in the Marshalsea Prison, where he remained for fourteen weeks. After some additional schooling, Dickens worked as a clerk in a law office and taught himself shorthand; this qualified him to begin working in 1831 as a reporter in the House of Commons, where he became known for the speed with which he took down speeches.

By 1833 Dickens was publishing humorous sketches of London life in the Monthly Magazine, which were collected in book form as Sketches by "Boz". These were followed by the publication in installments of the comic adventures that became The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, whose unprecedented popularity made the twenty-five-year-old author a national figure. In 1836 he married Catherine Hogarth, who would bear him ten children over a period of fifteen years. Dickens's energies enabled him to lead an active family and social life, including an indulgence in elaborate amateur theatricals, while maintaining a literary productiveness of astonishing proportions. He characteristically wrote his novels for serial publication and was himself the editor of many of the periodicals in which they appeared, including Bentley's Miscellany, the Daily News, Household Words, and All the Year Round. Among his close associates were his future biographer John Forster and the younger Wilkie Collins, with whom he collaborated on fictional and dramatic works. In rapid succession he published Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Barnaby Rudge, sometimes working on several novels simultaneously.

Dickens's celebrity led to a tour of the United States in 1842. There he met Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, and other literary figures, and was received with an enthusiasm that was dimmed somewhat by the criticisms Dickens expressed in his American Notes and in the American chapters of Martin Chuzzlewit. The appearance of A Christmas Carol in 1843 sealed his position as the most widely popular writer of his time; it became an annual tradition for him to write a story for the season, of which the most memorable were The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth. He continued to produce novels at only a slightly diminished rate, publishing Dombey and Son in 1848 and David Copperfield in 1850.

From this point on, his novels tended to be more elaborately constructed and harsher and less buoyant in tone than his earlier works. These late novels include Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. Our Mutual Friend, published in 1865, was his last completed novel and perhaps the most somber and savage of them all. Dickens had separated from his wife in 1858-he had become involved a year earlier with a young actress named Ellen Ternan-and the ensuing scandal had alienated him from many of his former associates and admirers. He was weakened by years of overwork and by a near-fatal railroad disaster during the writing of Our Mutual Friend. Nevertheless, he embarked on a series of public readings, including a return visit to America in 1867, which further eroded his health. A final work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a crime novel much influenced by Wilkie Collins, was left unfinished upon his death on June 9,1870, at the age of 58.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lisa of Troy on August 21, 2024

Money can't buy you love (but it can keep you out of debtor's prison) David Copperfield is a fictional biography of the life of David Copperfield starting with his birth. David has a very unhappy childhood, subject to much torment. How will this shape and mold David? On whom can he rely? How will Mr.......more

Goodreads review by mark on March 22, 2015

DAVID COPPERFIELD: MASTER VILLAIN oh you architect of doom! your devious passivity and willful naivete know no boundaries! your crimes are many! your poor doting mother - hustled off to an early grave, and you do nothing! you repay the Murdstones' attempts at improvement with intransigence and a savage b......more

Goodreads review by [ J o ] on July 10, 2023

Read as part of The Infinite Variety Reading Challenge, based on the BBC's Big Read Poll of 2003. Charles Dickens can do no wrong, except perhaps keep around 100 pages of rather irrelevant tangents in this book. It was such a powerhouse of characterisation and world-building that I barely know where t......more

Goodreads review by Vit on February 13, 2022

David Copperfield is a convolutedly grotesque and darkly satirical Bildungsroman. First of all, David Copperfield is a colourful collection of inimitable characters. And we pass through this flowery assembly as through the gallery of images taken from Hieronymus Bosch’s canvases… The gloomy taint that......more

Goodreads review by Violet on July 15, 2017

Call it an act of heresy but I’m abandoning this. I’ve got to page 600 which means I’ve only another 150 pages to go but I’ve completely lost interest. The characters are too one dimensional and you can see the plot coming as if it’s daubed in road marking paint. I’ve read all of Dickens’ novels exc......more