David Copperfield Illustrated

David Copperfield is the eighth novel by Charles Dickens. The novel's full title is The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account).[N 1] It was first published as a serial in 184950, and as a book in 1850.

The novel features the character David Copperfield, and is written in the first person, as a description of his life until middle age, with his own adventures and the numerous friends and enemies he meets along his way. It is his journey of change and growth from infancy to maturity, as people enter and leave his life and he passes through the stages of his development.

It has been called his masterpiece, "the triumph of the art of Dickens",[2][3] which marks a turning point in his work, the point of separation between the novels of youth and those of maturity.[3][4] Though written in the first person, David Copperfield is considered to be more than an autobiography, going beyond this framework in the richness of its themes and the originality of its writing, which makes it a true autobiographical novel.[4][5] In the words of the author, this novel was "a very complicated weaving of truth and invention".[6] Some elements of the novel follow events in Dickens's own life.[7] It was Dickens' favourite among his own novels. In the preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens wrote, "like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield.

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