David Copperfield

David Copperfield, is a novel in the bildungsroman genre by Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from infancy to maturity. It was first published as a serial in 1849 and 1850, and as a book in 1850.

David Copperfield is also an autobiographical novel: *a very complicated weaving of truth and invention*, with events following Dickens’s own life. Of the books he wrote, it was his favourite. Called *the triumph of the art of Dickens*, it marks a turning point in his work, separating the novels of youth and those of maturity.

At first glance, the work is modelled on 18th-century *personal histories* that were very popular, like Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews or Tom Jones, but David Copperfield is a more carefully structured work. It begins, like other novels by Dickens, with a bleak picture of childhood in Victorian England, followed by young Copperfield’s slow social ascent, as he painfully provides for his aunt, while continuing his studies.