Rating: 
Summary: Dickens at his best...
Review: Dickens referred to this book as his favorite and this is not surprising. It does contain more than the usual autobiographical details than probably any other book. However, this is the book in which Dickens reached the height of his powers as an imaginative artist. It is in some ways the fulfillment of a promise made in his earlier works of fiction. The story of David Copperfield is familiar, the orphan boy who escapes hard times with a cruel stepfather to a more secure homelife with an eccentric aunt and then makes his way in world amid humor and tragedy. While the story is one of the best in the Dickens cannon, it is the characters that stand out as some of the best approximations of humanity ever put on papper. Mr. Murdstone, Mr. Macawber, Aunt Betsy Trotwood, Barcus, Uriah Heap, and Lit'le Emily are all mouments to the art of the novel and a testament to the greatness of Dickens.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific literature
Review: Charles Dickens has been one of my favorite authors since I was forced to read him in high school. I had not picked up one of his stories since, but upon reading that David Copperfield was Dicken's personal favorite book he had authored, I decided to try him again. I was not disappointed. Dicken's creates an incredible cast of characters and paints a vivid portrait of 19th-century England. Aside from fulfulling those crucial elements of writing a novel, Dickens tells a terrific story. The initial serialization of the story into 19 monthly parts required Dickens to create many dramatic buildups and twists and turns that kept the audience buying the next installment. When it is all put together the novel is an unexpected roller coaster that has many climbs, dives, loop-the-loops, and sharp curves. In the end everything of course comes together beautifully and the characters all get their just desserts. This is yet another clinic by Dickens in how to write a well organized, though unpredictable, novel that maintains the interest of a reader through approx. 900 pages of writing. It is a wonderful experience that all lovers of good fiction should at least attempt.
Rating: 
Summary: Dickens' Favorite For a Good Reason
Review: That this work, and the character of David Copperfield in particular, is Charles Dickens' personal favorite is understandable. Copperfield's ostensible auto-biography paints his character in simultaneous humanity and nobility that is difficult to achieve without creating a cartoon. Dicken's achieves this subtlely over the full course of the text - nowhere does the story become superfluous except in the final pages. What is remarkable is that this portrait of Copperfield exists in the same volume as the equally well-developed J. Steerforth. The contrast of Steerforth (noble to the expense of his humanity, but failing because of human faults) with Copperfield (human to the expense of his nobility, and succeeding because of human virtues) is excellent and certainly carries much of the tension in the story. This book thrives on character, much like my second-favorite Dickens' work: Bleak House. As an aside, the comparison of both Mr. Richard (name changed to avoid titters) and Micawber in this volume with Harold Skimpole in Bleak House is most engaging. The impact of these ancillary figures is excellent, and continuing revelation of Dickens pragmatism concerning money, ambition, and greed. Indeed, David Copperfield is so inundated with pecuniary issues that it becomes almost unnoticable - finally creating the impression that money is the air we breathe, and that lack of it is something like asthma, while abundance of it is something like hyperventilation. While the sentimentality may be regrettable to some, it comes with the territory with Dickens. Folks who don't see sentimentality in bleak and stark portraits of brutal workhouse life simply do not recognize that the psychological impact of such descriptions is every bit as exaggerated as the more saccharine emotional scenes. Finally, I echo other reviewers in wincing a bit at the character of Dora, but I feel like this is possible only because of her fate. Had Dickens permitted his plot to retain a evolving relationship between Dora and Copperfield, the portrait would have been far more disturbing and far more acceptable to our sophisticated psychoanalysis. Overall, a superb work that fulfills a primary purpose of entertainment, without overarching political or social commentary. Copperfield stands at the forefront of a host of well developed and unique characters, acting within an engaging plot.
Rating:
Summary: Good people making bad decisions
Review: "David Copperfield" is a classic Dickens novel, full of wonderful, interesting characters who experience all of the hardships and joys that the world can through at them. The writing is vital and captivating, as with all of his wonderful books. Most interesting, I feel, to David Copperfield, is the bad choices that good people can make, and how they live with the repercussions of those choices. Represented by Little Emily's misfortune, and David Copperfield's own woeful marriage, as well as his aunt's various misjudgments and errors. Some deal with these bad choices honorably, some woefully, some disastrously. We all make mistakes, the book says, but it is how we deal with these mistakes that define us. The book travels from the high to the low and back again of the British class system, although not necessarily a critique of it., with David Copperfield being able to flow through each social structure at one time or another. A full picture is gained. There are heroes and villains alike amongst the most-very humble and the most-very rich. Fortunes rise and fall, loves are won and lost, people live and die, all under the deft pen of Dickens, with his ability to wring both laughter and tears from a reader. (A cliché, I know, yet a true one.)
Rating: 
Summary: David Copperfield
Review: "David Copperfield"
By,
Charles Dickens The book should be read by the people who may/may not like the nonfiction types of books. The book that I have chosen to read was called "David Copperfield". David Copperfield had been a young boy who in some way an abandoned child. David's father died six months before David was even born. So his mother hired a lady named Peggotty, she was a main character in the book. David's mother then married a man called Mr. Murdstone who David did not like but lived with. Later in the book David's mother and older brother had died so then David had to live in a house with Peggotty and Mr. Murdstone. Mr. Murdstone wasn't talked about much because David did not like him, he was real mean to David. Although David was sad about his mother dead he had managed to get on with his life.
I thought that this had an all right beginning with a confusing end. I rated this book a two because I was not all that interested in it.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: "David Copperfield" has everything: A captivating narrator, engaging-- and very human-- secondary characters,and deceitful villans. Throughout, Dickens explores many issues with a liberty which is hard to associate with the Victorian age.
Copperfield's ruminations on friendship-- by means of his two best-friends Traddles and Steerforth -- develope as he ages. His complicated thoughts about marriage are sorrowful. Even Copperfield's mother is presented with a realistic eye, and not idealized. "David Copperfield" is over 700 pages. I wished it was longer.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable but more than I wanted to know about his life
Review: I definitely liked this book (I mean it's not one of my top 5 but I definitely liked it) but as usual, Dickens carries the novel out really far. He included practically an entire life story, all of which was really detailed. It was a good book, just too much time spent on every detail of his life - major or not. So overall I really liked it though.
Rating:
Summary: A MILLION CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A NOVEL
Review: Last summer I spent part it reading a mammoth novel called Underworld, written by Don Delillo. When I had completed the 800 odd pages of it, I felt betrayed. After spending the better part of a month reading it, I felt numb, with no emotional connection to the book at all. It did nothing for me. History has repeated itself with David Copperfield this summer. As character study, I have to admit that this book is a work of virtuosic genius. It follows the life of one David Copperfield from his earliest days to his eventual fame as a writer. This was Dickens' favorite work and I'm sure it had something to do with the great extent of its autobiographical content. All the characters work on the deepest psychological level. As a novel, this book is rubbish. I haven't quite put my finger on why. I found it hard to get involved in it after the first 200 pages or so. It seems that when things begin to dull, Dickens just brings about the death of someone. To give David a hard life, his father dies before he is born. His mother remarries an ultra puritan who beats and does everything he can to make David miserable. His mother dies, leaving David at the mercy of his stepfather. Even a dog gets a death scene where she dies of a broken heart. Please. I would figure that after reading 875 pages I would have a lot to say about it. I don't. I could care less about this book one way or the other. I feel as though it was written, like most of Dickens books, serially. So I figure Dickens got paid money for each installment he wrote, hence, the more chapters, the more money. So he fluffed it up. Hermann Melville once said that a shark is more dangerous than a whale, metaphorically meaning that an efficent focused novel was light years better that a wandering formless epic. I agree with him. Books like this bloated tome were meant to keep 19th century bourgeois busy by a fire. I'm not against long novels, it's just don't make long novels out of short ones. Dostoyevsky is a good example of an epic tale writer who also happens to be a genius. Thackeray is a greater writer who wrote much in the same fashion as Dickens but who actually communicated to me. Check out his Vanity Fair for a better Victorian novel. Even George Eliot, with all her faults, is a better read than Dickens. Or even better yet, try Balzac. If you pick this book up, prepare to be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Dickens' Favorite
Review: "David Copperfield", the story of the abandoned orphan who develops a disciplined heart, is supposedly as close as Charles Dickens came to an autobiography. Dickens even remarked a few years before his death that, of all his works, he liked this one best. While I cannot agree with Dickens on that sentiment, I will agree that "David Copperfield" is a good story. The novel was written from a first-person persepective, which is the first Dickens' story I have read like that. It gives the story a 'detached from its surroundings' feel that is unusual to a Dickens' novel. My biggest pleasure in reading Dickens is his ability to vividly bring to life even the most minor characters. I don't know if he felt purposefully restrained by the point of view he took; but, I feel it has been done nonetheless. While it still irks me a little when reading Victorian literature, I have gotten used to the constant crying of the characters and the praise they always heap on each other. One wonders from reading these stories if Victorian England wasn't nothing more than a land of blubberers and abject fawners. Dickens does bring "David Copperfield" to a good end though. This is certainly one of those stories where you frequently get fed up with the hero for not seeing what is so obvious to the reader. While I still count "Great Expectations" as Dickens greatest achievement, "David Copperfield" is a solid second. "David Copperfield" shares many of the Dickensian qualities that would come together so well in "Great Expectations". "David Copperfield" has a clean, vivid narration that brings into focus the things which Dickens experienced. It also is mostly missing the long intervals of filler material so common to Victorian literature. I don't know if it is true or not but, I have heard that writers of this time were paid by the word. Having read Dickens' "Bleak House", it would not surprise me to find out that this is true. To sum up: I would recommend "David Copperfield" to anyone who enjoys Victorian literature. It is one of the better examples of that era's successes.
Rating:
Summary: A Novel whose Familiarity should not Obscure its Brilliance
Review: Both critics and Charles Dickens himself generally class
"David Copperfield" as his "greatest" novel. The strains of autobiography and the rich array of comic and tragicomic characters give the reader the best of Dickens' wit and social outrage. As the years go by, though, people begin to speak of David Copperfield as a "set piece", a bit of Victoriana different in format but not in importance from a very natty
but a bit days-gone-by bit of antique furniture. This view misjudges the novel. This book presents a rich set of characters in a complex novel, deeply satisfying and in many ways still a very modern work. It's very hard to write about "good" and "evil" without descending into morality play, but this novel succeeds. The story is broken into three
"threads": a young boy, orphaned early, endures an unhappy childhood refreshed by periods of happiness (and comedy);
that same boy goes through late adolescence, and comes "into his own"; and finally, the narrator, now a man, sees the resolution of the various plot threads built through the early parts of the novel. Many Dickens themes are played out here--the superiority of goodness to affluence, the persistence and affrontery of fraud, and the way in which social institutions frequently hinder rather than advance their stated goals. The book does not read like a polemic, though--it reads like a bit of serial fiction (which in fact it was). If you are hunting a good, solid read about values and
curious characters, David Copperfield stands ready to show you his world.
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