David Copperfield
1850
David Copperfield is the novel Dickens loved most, and reading it, you understand why. It pulses with a personal warmth that distinguishes it from his other works, as if Dickens finally wrote the book he'd been needing to write his entire life. The story follows young David from a blustery seaside childhood through poverty, factory work, school, love, and ultimately to his calling as a novelist. Along the way, he encounters some of fiction's most unforgettable characters: the irrepressible Micawber, perpetually in debt yet eternally optimistic; the nauseatingly humble Uriah Heep, whose oily villainy hides beneath professions of humility; the formidable Betsey Trotwood, who marches against donkey ears at Folkestone with furious dignity; and Dora, his first love, deliciously foolish and entirely wonderful. But at its core, this is a novel about how we become who we are through the people who shape us and the suffering we transform into understanding. Dickens drew his own childhood wounds here, and the rawness shows. The result is a book that breaks your heart with its portrait of childhood vulnerability, then builds it back up with the stubborn, irrational hope that defines what it means to survive.
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“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.””
— Charles Dickens
“My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest.””
— Charles Dickens
“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.””
— Charles Dickens
“My advice is, never do to-morrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!””
— Charles Dickens
“Never," said my aunt, "be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you.””
— Charles Dickens
“There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.””
— Charles Dickens
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness.Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery””
— Charles Dickens
“Trifles make the sum of life. ””
— Charles Dickens
“I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time.””
— Charles Dickens
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Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. Lex, lex-books.com/book/david-copperfield-d0c33a41-4fbe-4c4b-8f77-1879fd65a38b.Dickens, C. (1850). David Copperfield. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/david-copperfield-d0c33a41-4fbe-4c4b-8f77-1879fd65a38bDickens, Charles. David Copperfield. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/david-copperfield-d0c33a41-4fbe-4c4b-8f77-1879fd65a38b.
