David Copperfield
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- £2.49
Publisher Description
'Like so many fond parents I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child,' wrote Charles Dickens. 'And his name is David Copperfield.'
Of all of Dickens's novels, David Copperfield most closely reflects the events of his own life. The story of an abandoned waif who discovers life and love in an indifferent world, this classic tale of childhood is populated with a cast of eccentrics, innocents, and villains who number among the author's greatest creations.
'David Copperfield is filled with characters of the most astonishing variety, vividness, and originality,' noted Somerset Maugham. 'They are not realistic and yet they abound with life. There never were such people as the Micawbers, Pegotty and Barkis, Traddles, Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick, Uriah Heep and his mother. They are fantastic inventions of Dickens's exultant imagination, but they have so much vigor, they are so consistent, they are presented with so much conviction, that you believe in them. They are extravagant, but not unreal, and when you have once to know them you can never quite forget them.' T. S. Eliot agreed: 'Dickens excelled in character; in the creation of characters of greater intensity than human beings.' And Virginia Woolf concluded: 'In David Copperfield, though characters swarm and life flows into every creek and cranny, some common feelings--youth, gaiety, hope--envelops the tumult, brings the scattered parts together, and invests the most perfect of all the Dickens novels with an atmosphere of beauty.'
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Charles Dickens named David Copperfield as his favorite of all his books. And we agree: This riveting semiautobiographical novel is an absolute must-read. Born to a poor, widowed mother in a 19th-century English village, the book’s hero eventually grows up to be a successful writer—encountering no shortage of hardship, adventure, romance, mystery, and triumph along his epic journey. Dickens’ writing is so evocative. He makes us ache for young David throughout his childhood of abuse and neglect, and he makes us treasure precious moments of care and tenderness just as much as his hero does. And Dickens surrounds his plucky protagonist with an ensemble of unforgettable characters that have become famous in their own right, from the two-faced villain Uriah Heep to the eternally optimistic Mr. Micawber. At turns deeply tragic and sidesplittingly funny, David Copperfield is as relatable today as it was in the Victorian era. It’s the kind of book the word “classic” was invented for.
