David Copperfield

A first-person life, from a childhood handed to a cruel stepfather and a bottling warehouse through to a career as a novelist. It is the most openly autobiographical thing Dickens wrote — he had worked in a boot-blacking factory at twelve while his father sat in debtors’ prison, and had told almost nobody — and he said it was his own favourite among his books.

The reason it holds up as a curriculum text is the range of characters a reader has to learn to read correctly: Micawber, Steerforth, Uriah Heep and Betsey Trotwood are all tests of judgment.

Context: Charles Dickens (1812-1870) published David Copperfield in monthly instalments between 1849 and 1850. In his preface to a later edition he called it his favourite of his own novels.

Connections

• Charles Dickens — the author.
• Poverty — the childhood the book opens with, and the one Dickens had.
• Literature