David Copperfield is a partly autobiographical novel by the English author Charles Dickens. It was written and published in monthly segments in 1849 and 1850 and published in book form in 1850. It has always been one of Dickens’s most popular novels. The novel describes David Copperfield’s process of maturing from childhood to adulthood. It includes many autobiographical details from Dickens’s life, such as the factory work he undertook while his father was in prison for debt. The famous character of Mr. Micawber is based in part on Charles Dickens’s own father.
David Copperfield is born, shortly after his father’s death, to a mother who is both gentle and weak-willed. She then marries Mr. Murdstone, a cruel man with an equally cruel sister. Together they drive David’s mother to an early death. David is sent to a school with a tyrannical headmaster, Creakle. There David makes friends with the fascinating and brilliant Steerforth and the good-humored Traddles. The next phase of David’s life is spent doing badly paid warehouse work in London. However, his poor existence is made more bearable by his friendship with the Micawber family. David then runs away to Dover and lives with his aunt, Miss Betsey Trotwood, and her weak-minded lodger, Mr. Dick. David later goes to live with his aunt’s lawyer, Mr. Wickfield, and his daughter Agnes, whose high principles have a great influence on David. She loves him but he remains unaware of her feelings for him.
David then enters on a career in law, with the firm of Spenlow and Jorkins. Steerforth reenters the story at this point, and David introduces him to the family of his old nurse, Clara Peggotty. In the household is Little Em’ly, who is about to marry Ham. They are the niece and nephew of the fisherman Mr. Peggotty. Steerforth persuades Em’ly to run away with him but then abandons her in a foreign country, where she is found eventually by Mr. Peggotty. Steerforth is shipwrecked and drowned and, in trying to save him, Ham is drowned.
In the meantime, David marries Dora, the childlike daughter of Mr. Spenlow. After only a few years, Dora dies, and David travels to the European continent, at which time he publishes his first novel. David begins to notice Agnes Wickfield with renewed interest. Agnes’s father has become the helpless victim of the manipulations of Uriah Heep, an evil and corrupt clerk who wants to marry Agnes. Mr. Micawber, employed by Heep, exposes his misdeeds and Heep is imprisoned. David and Agnes then marry. At the end of the novel, Mr. Micawber has become a well-respected colonial magistrate in Australia.
Memorable characters in David Copperfield include Barkis the carrier, who carries goods for money, from whom the phrase “Barkis is willin'” comes. Mr. Dick is the gentle madman who tries to write a “memorial” of his life for the legal authorities. He does not succeed because of his obsession with the beheading of King Charles I. Other characters include the eccentric aunt, Betsey Trotwood, and the fawning Uriah Heep.
