In this series, our arts critics choose comforting works for these tough times
‘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.” So begins the ultimate autobiographical novel and the Charles Dickens work to which I find myself returning most frequently. Dickens himself famously referred to David Copperfield as “his favourite child” among his 15 novels. It’s mine, too, narrowly eclipsing Great Expectations and Bleak House.
His eighth novel, published in 1850, is the turning point that separates the youthful, episodic half of Dickens’s canon ( The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist) from the denser, darker works of maturity ( Bleak House, Hard Times). As such, it’s the perfect blend of broad comedy and serious intent. All at once it’s a picaresque romp, a tender bildungsroman, a sprawling state-of-thenation epic and an ode to human goodness. “The triumph of the art of Dickens,” as biographer Sylvère Monod put it. “The best work of the best English novelist,” said no less than Tolstoy.
How closely does it mirror Dickens’s own life? In the author’s words, it’s “a complicated weaving of truth and invention”. The protagonist has his creator’s initials in reverse and his story follows a similar trajectory, from boyhood penury to becoming a celebrated man of letters. The sections set at boarding school and the bootblacking factory, in which
Dickens exorcised painful memories, aren’t just some of the most vivid in Victorian literature but helped bring about changes in education policy and child labour laws.
Best of all is its dramatis personae. Conjuring up unforgettable characters (usually with unforgettable names) was one of Dickens’s great strengths. Nowhere is it more apparent than in Copperfield. Its vibrant pages are populated by the likes of kindly housekeeper Peggotty, debt-plagued Mr Micawber (“something will turn up”), eccentric aunt Betsey Trotwood, scatterbrained Mr Dick (strangely obsessed with Charles I’s head), charismatic bounder Steerforth and parasitic sycophant Uriah Heep (“so very ’umble”).
One word of warning: don’t be put off by its door-stopping size. The Penguin Classics edition might run to a daunting 974 pages but 150 of those are taken up with introductions, appendices and Phiz’s evocative illustrations. Besides, once you’re swept up, it fairly races along.
I can also heartily recommend satirist Armando Iannucci’s rollicking recent film adaptation – the first for more than half a century, remarkably – either as an alternative or for companion viewing. It’s not conventionally faithful but truly captures the novel’s life-affirming spirit. It’s available for streaming. Spoiler: David is indeed the hero of his own life.