A gallery of the Phiz David Copperfield illustrations

Though not specifically on David Copperfield, George Santayana’s essay defends the merits of Dickensian realism as against the burgeoning aesthetic of modernist fiction.

Excerpts from Dickens’s speeches that bear in part on David Copperfield. Drawn from The Speeches of Charles Dickens. Edited by K. J. Fielding. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.

Detail from Cross’s London Guide, published in 1851.

Letter excerpts (and annotations) that relate to the composition, publication, or reception of David Copperfield. Many of these excerpts can also be found in John Forster’s Life of Dickens.

I. Primary Sources Columbia contains two books considered first editions. Both of these are in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library under the same call number (although they are quite different objects): B 825 D55 P6 1850. Identifier Description N (Copy 2)* Book contains the original blue serial covers (a.k.a. wrappers) and Copperfield Advertiser pages, […]

Announcement from the Copperfield Advertiser.

“That this is in many respects the most beautiful and highly finished work which the world has had from the pen of Mr. Dickens, we are strongly of opinion. It has all the merits to which the author already owes a world-wide popularity; with some graces which are peculiar to itself—or have been but feebly indicated in his former creations.”

“We have now before us the first brick of Mr. Dickens’s new literary edifice; and confess, for the disappointment of the quidnuncs, that we have no anticipation from the brick—as some of our contemporaries may perhaps have—of the ultimate character and complete proportions of the structure. We have no objection, however, to hand about the specimen, in case any of our readers may possess a better gift for divination than ourselves.”

“There is as much difference between Mr. Dicken’s later books and his Sketches by Boz as between Wilkie’s pseudo-Spanish pictures and “The Blind Fiddler” or “The Rabbit on the Wall.” He has become the most mannered of popular writers; and though his popularity, that is, the sale of his new works, increases rather than diminishes, we suspect that his readers are of a lower class than in the days of Pickwick and Oliver Twist.”

“Consistency in fiction is of two kinds. One is a perfect coherence of incident, action, and discourse; but this exact consistency is not often realized, and cannot be looked for in books that are published piecemeal. There is another consistency which arises from the present cause being adequate for immediate effect; and this is mostly wanting in David Copperfield.”

“On the whole is may be said that, while there are few things that Mr. Thackeray can do in way of description that Mr. Dickens could not also do, there is a large region of objects and appearances familiar to the artistic activity of Mr. Dickens, where Mr. Thackeray would not find himself at home.”

“Without implying any comparison of merit, it is certain that the same turn of mind which placed Homer among minstrels, Shakespeare among playwrights, and Scott among the writers of three-volume novels, has led Dickens and Thackeray to employ themselves in writing serial tales. “

“How are we to account for [Dickens] wide-spread popularity? Not because the author is faultless—he is too human for that; not because his plots are of absorbing interest—neither Shakespeare’s not Scott’s are so; but because of his kindly, all-pervading charity, which would cover a multitude of failings, because of his genial humour and exquisite comprehension of the national character and manners, because of his tenderness, because of his purity, and, above all, because of his deep reverence for the household sanctities, his enthusiastic worship of the household gods.”

“There is a book familiar to us all, and the more familiar now, probably, because Mr. Gladstone solaced himself with it after his illness, and so set all good Liberals (of whom I wish to be considered one) upon reading it over again. I mean David Copperfield. “

This fascinating review is relevant not so much to our understanding of David Copperfield as about the psychological premises that were part of Lewes’s criticism and assumptions about Victorian psychology.

“Dicken’s Copperfield. ‘The Stoker’ a sheer imitation of Dickens, the projected novel even more so. The story of the trunk, the boy who delights and charms everyone, the menial labor, his sweetheart in the country house, the dirty houses, et al., but above all the method. It was my intention, as I now see, to write a Dickens novel, but enhanced by the sharper lights I should have taken from the times and the duller ones I should have got from myself.”

In “David Copperfield” there are perhaps as many monsters as in “Dombey and Son,” but they are not so merely monsters, and there are many more personalities. The of these is David’s poor, pretty young widowed mother, who in her hapless second marriage is very tenderly and truly portrayed, and the next are David’s successive and contrasted wives, Dora Spenlow and Agnes Wickfield…

Website; Biographies & Letters; Bibliographies; and Film & TV Adaptations

Excerpts relevant to the life of Charles Dickens and the publication of David Copperfield drawn from Charles Dickens: A Chronology of His Life published by the Victorian Web

2000, USA: Medak, Peter, director. “David Copperfield.” Hallmark Entertainment. Three 60-minute TV episodes; aired on TNT.

1999, UK/USA: Curtis, Simon, director. “David Copperfield.” BBC. TV adaptation. 13 Episodes

1969, UK: Mann, Delbert, director. “David Copperfield.” 20th Century Fox Television. Released as a theatrical film in Europe; premiered as an NBC television special in the USA.

1965, Italy: Majano, Anton Giulio, director. “David Copperfield.” Radiotelevisione Italiana. Black-and-white TV series in Italian.

1935, USA: Cukor, George, director. “The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observation of David Copperfield, the Younger.” MGM. Black-and-white film.