Dickens wrote David Copperfield between 1849 and 1850, calling it his "favourite child" among his novels. It is his most explicitly autobiographical work, the early scenes of David's childhood humiliation, when his stepfather Murdstone sends him to work in a London warehouse pasting labels on bottles, draw directly from Dickens's own experience at Warren's Blacking Factory as a child. David narrates his own story from birth through adulthood, tracking the loss of his mother and the cruelty of the Murdstones, his education at Salem House and later at Canterbury under the eccentric Mr. Wickfield, and his professional life as a parliamentary reporter and eventually a novelist.
The novel contains two of Dickens's most memorable psychological portraits. Uriah Heep, the clerk who perpetually describes himself as "umble" while systematically defrauding his employer, is Dickens's study in how social resentment cloaks itself in deference, "I am well aware that I am the umblest person going" is a threat dressed as a compliment. James Steerforth, David's charismatic school friend who seduces and abandons Emily, is the equal-and-opposite figure: a man whose charm functions because he has never had to reckon seriously with the consequences of his choices, and who is therefore incapable of the development the novel assigns to David.
What Dickens identifies with unusual clarity is the gap between the story a person tells about their own life and the life that actually happened. David constructs himself as a survivor, resilient, ultimately fortunate, surrounded by eccentrics who are harmless or benign. Rereading the novel, one notices how much violence and exploitation David's cheerful narration softens or skips past. That gap, between the narrator's self-presentation and the events the novel actually depicts, is the most interesting structural feature of a book that is sometimes underestimated because it is also genuinely enjoyable.
The novel's enduring readability owes much to the precision of its construction, the economy of means by which it achieves its effects, and the care with which the author builds a world that is internally coherent enough to generate genuine surprise at the moments of revelation. These are qualities that no amount of time diminishes, and they are why the book continues to find new readers across generations.
Charles Dickens walked up to 20 miles a night through London streets gathering material for his novels.
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