David Copperfield

Charles Dickens · English text · 354,527 words

David tells the story of his life from childhood into adulthood, looking back on people and decisions that shaped his sense of himself. The novel moves through hardship, education, work, friendship, and the making of a writer.

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Background

Dickens uses a first-person retrospective voice that combines the feelings of a younger David with the perspective of the adult narrator. The result asks readers to notice not only what happened but how memory arranges and interprets it.

Reading notes

Listen for changes between the child’s immediate experience and the adult narrator’s judgment.
Track recurring relationships as David moves through different homes and workplaces.
Notice how stories, letters, and acts of reading affect the characters’ self-understanding.

Version note

Text source: the Standard Ebooks EPUB edition identified on this page. This site extracted the English text and retained the source edition’s chapter order. Public-domain status must be checked for the territory where the text will be distributed.