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 | | David Copperfield (Oxford World's Classics) by Charles Dickens, Andrew Sanders (Contributor), Nina Burgis (Editor) ISBN-10: 9780192835789 ISBN-10: 0-19-283578-5 ISBN-13: 9780192835789 ISBN-13: 978-0-19-283578-9 Paperback 1999-06-10 Oxford University Press, USA Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Amazon.com Beginning in 1854 up through to his death in 1870, Charles Dickens abridged and adapted many of his more popular works and performed them as staged readings. This version, each page illustrated with lovely watercolor paintings, is a beautiful example of one of these adaptations. Because it is quite seriously abridged, the story concentrates primarily on the extended family of Mr. Peggotty: his orphaned nephew, Ham; his adopted niece, Little Emily; and Mrs. Gummidge, self-described as "a lone lorn creetur and everythink went contrairy with her." When Little Emily runs away with Copperfield's former schoolmate, leaving Mr. Peggotty completely brokenhearted, the whole family is thrown into turmoil. But Dickens weaves some comic relief throughout the story with the introduction of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, and David's love for his pretty, silly "child-wife," Dora. Dark nights, mysterious locations, and the final destructive storm provide classic Dickensian drama. Although this is not David Copperfield in its entirety, it is a great introduction to the world and the language of Charles Dickens. | ||
Product Description One of Dickens's best-loved and most personal novels, David Copperfield is the embodiment of Dickens's own boyhood experience recalling his employment as a child in a London warehouse. This edition, which has the accurate Clarendon text, includes Dickens's trial titles and working notes, and eight original illustrations by "Phiz." | ||
Download Description 'I really think I have done it ingeniously and with a very complicated interweaving of truth and fiction.' So wrote Dickens of David Copperfield (1850), the novel he called his 'favourite child'. Through his hero Dickens draws openly on his own life, as David Copperfield recalls his experiences from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Rosa Dartle, Dora, Steerforth and Uriah Heep are among the characters who focus the hero's sexual and emotional drives, and Mr Micawber, a portrait of Dickens's own father, evokes the mixture of love, nostalgia and guilt that, put together, make this Dickens's most quoted and best-loved novel. | ||
Reviews | ||
Dickens At His Best Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is said to be Dickens' favorite book that he ever wrote. Copperfield's and Dickens' childhoods were classically the same and many critics believe that David Copperfield was actually a Charles Dickens autobiography. He modeled many of the characters in this novel after people he knew; for instance, Micawber was modeled after Dickens' own father who was sent to debtors prison. However, Micawber becomes a humorous, amiable character who was quite different from Dickens' own father. This book is definitely of 5 star quality and I will teach it in my College English classes when I begin teaching. | ||
Classic catharsis What could be more prosaic? A physically abused child surmounts all obstacles through diligence, devotion, goodness, and terrific good luck at key moments. But within this simple frame Dickens paints a tapestry of pity and terror and epiphany. To encounter such a broad spectrum of good and evil - the pure femininity of a lover, the earthy sweetness of a nurse, the generosity of a mentor, the frivolity of a sweetheart, parental naivete and cruelty, the destructive arrogance of a best friend, the viciousness of a Uriah Heep - would be an object lesson in Humanity. But we encounter all this each day. This dawns on you with each passing chapter - and that you are confronting yourself as you confront them: Your own evil and your own goodness rising above the shadows. Copperfield is a quick course in religion and philosophy and psychology. By the end, you're transformed vicariously and like David Copperfield dismiss the shadows: "Thus I leave them; thus I always find them; thus they wear their time away, from year to year". Please note: Dickens is not my favorite author. His style at times is too melodramatic. But David Copperfield is wonderful. If we had only this, it would be clear Dickens was a master who walked the talk. Highly commended even for those who are not Dickens fans. | ||
A wonderful (audio)book I have read and listened to many of Dickens' novels, and this is, without a doubt, my favorite. In fact, this is my favorite audiobook bar none. This BBC Radio adaptation is the perfect introduction to Dickens and to David Copperfield in particular for those who may be dissuaded from reading Copperfield because of its length. It is impossible to imagine that the BBC could have found better performers for the roles--I can easily hear their voices in my mind as I recall the story. Although the story is abridged, you don't get the sense that you are missing any of the important points of the story. In fact, it's a much more satisfying "read" than most books in their unabridged version. | ||
Poor print quality for the price For the price of the Everyman edition, one would expect the pages to be cleanly printed. Instead, the letters are faded and weak on many pages. On many pages, parts of some letters are missing altogether. | ||
Sublime "But one face, shining on me like a heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains. I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity beside me. My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night, but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company." [David Copperfield] Timeless, full of plastic characters, entertaining, colourful, warm. Imagine Dostoevsky, but with more optimism and respect and deep love for humans. Kind regards, Mario. | ||