Rating: 
Summary: HELL ON PAPER
Review: AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! this book is so incredibly awfull...long...boring...STUPID..i had to read this in english honors and i nearly killed my teacher..AHHHHHH!!!! stay away at all costs!!!
Rating: 
Summary: A MIXTURE OF TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH
Review: DAVID COPPERFIELD TAKES YOU BACK IN TIME, TO THE THEN HARSH ENGLISH SOCIETY. HE GROWS UP TO BE AN ASPIRING LAWYER BUT IN THE PROCESS OF HIS CHILDHOOD HAS TO SUFFER THE ILL CONSEQUENCES OF HIS MOTHER GETTING A NEW HUSBAND AND HE A NEW FATHER. THE MOST FASCINATING CHARACTER IS BETSY TROTWOOD, WHO BEING HIS GREAT AUNT AND A MUCH LOVED GUARDIAN TO HIS FATHER, WHO COMES AND CHANGES THE ENTIRE COURSE OF HIS LIFE. AND THEN THERE ARE NUMEROUS OTHER CHARACTERS WHO DEFINITELY CAPTURE THE IMAGINATION AND WIT OF THE LEGENDARY CHARLES DICKENS. A MUST READ.
Rating:
Summary: Ignore the ignorant
Review: David Copperfield uses the story of Copperfield's life from birth through middle life to introduce and explore some wonderful personalities. Look more for deep and penetrating character studies than a fast moving plot line. It is not character study alone, however. Again and again, through many characters and many instances, he seems to really explore "the first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart", and that "there can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose". Look for these themes to come in from the very beginning and continue until they are actually spelled out by one character and contemplated by another. When David is born, his father is already buried in the churchyard nearby. He, his mother, and their servant Pegotty live happily enough as a family until his mother remarries. The new husband does not like frivolity or friendly association with servants but more than that, he does not like David. David is sent off to boarding school and then sent out to work. Barred from his mother's affections by his stepfather, Pegotty becomes a full mother figure and his ties to her and her family only deepen with time. Through her, he meets her brother, Mr. Pegotty; her nephew?, Ham, the widow Mrs. Gummidge and Mr. Pegotty's niece, Emily. At school, he makes fast friends with many boys but most especially with the privileged James Steerforth and the not so privileged Tommy Traddles, both of whom show up again in David's adulthood. In the bottling warehouse where he is sent to work as a child, he lodges with Mr. And Mrs. Micawber who are always in debt. They also show up again in his adulthood. When the station of life that he is being forced into at his tender age becomes too much for him, he escapes to seek out his eccentric great aunt Betsey Trotwood who takes him in and provides for him. Through her, he meets her lawyer, Mr. Wickfield, his daughter Agnes, Dr. Strong and his youthful bride, Annie and we mustn't forget Uriah Heep. He marries, works hard and becomes successful. These are the majority of the characters and it encompasses more than half of the novel to get to this point. (In my copy, that was just over four hundred and forty pages). The only slow part is after David finishes school and before he meets his wife. That part did seem to move slowly but, apart from that, the story moves very, very well and -after all the characters are set up and well developed - it takes off like a rocket and is difficult to put down without worrying about the various characters predicaments and wondering how he is going to pull all of these strings together. This IS Dickens after all. I won't spoil the meat of the plot line for you. Again, look for those themes - "the first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart", and "there can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose". David Copperfield is, if such things are possible, like a "Best Of" Dickens. It is one very substantial novel and stands alone as an exquisite masterpiece. Yet so many characters from his other novels seem to return here to be rounded out and more deeply developed. David Copperfield (himself) reminds me of Pip of Great Expectations, Betsey Trotwood of Miss Havisham, Mr. Micawber of Magwitch, and Agnes of Biddy. Mr. Murdstone seems to be of the Gradgrind line from Hard Times. One character reminded me not of another character in Dicken's work but of the vile character from Les Miserables (Victor Hugo) who repeatedly attempted to extort or do harm to Jean Valjean and Marius. It would be fun to have read all of Dicken's work before reading David Copperfield just to see Dicken's feelings of the various character types and what time has done to them in his mind. Of course, like any "Best Of", you could read only this one work and have a deep and abiding appreciation of Dickens without having read any of his others.
Rating:
Summary: The Consummate Dickens
Review: David Copperfield uses the story of Copperfield's life from birth through middle life to introduce and explore some wonderful personalities. Look more for deep and penetrating character studies than a fast moving plot line. It is not character study alone, however. Again and again, through many characters and many instances, he seems to really explore "the first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart", and that "there can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose". Look for these themes to come in from the very beginning and continue until they are actually spelled out by one character and contemplated by another. When David is born, his father is already buried in the churchyard nearby. He, his mother, and their servant Pegotty live happily enough as a family until his mother remarries. The new husband does not like frivolity or friendly association with servants but more than that, he does not like David. David is sent off to boarding school and then sent out to work. Barred from his mother's affections by his stepfather, Pegotty becomes a full mother figure and his ties to her and her family only deepen with time. Through her, he meets her brother, Mr. Pegotty; her nephew?, Ham, the widow Mrs. Gummidge and Mr. Pegotty's niece, Emily. At school, he makes fast friends with many boys but most especially with the privileged James Steerforth and the not so privileged Tommy Traddles, both of whom show up again in David's adulthood. In the bottling warehouse where he is sent to work as a child, he lodges with Mr. And Mrs. Micawber who are always in debt. They also show up again in his adulthood. When the station of life that he is being forced into at his tender age becomes too much for him, he escapes to seek out his eccentric great aunt Betsey Trotwood who takes him in and provides for him. Through her, he meets her lawyer, Mr. Wickfield, his daughter Agnes, Dr. Strong and his youthful bride, Annie and we mustn't forget Uriah Heep. He marries, works hard and becomes successful. These are the majority of the characters and it encompasses more than half of the novel to get to this point. (In my copy, that was just over four hundred and forty pages). The only slow part is after David finishes school and before he meets his wife. That part did seem to move slowly but, apart from that, the story moves very, very well and -after all the characters are set up and well developed - it takes off like a rocket and is difficult to put down without worrying about the various characters predicaments and wondering how he is going to pull all of these strings together. This IS Dickens after all. I won't spoil the meat of the plot line for you. Again, look for those themes - "the first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart", and "there can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose". David Copperfield is, if such things are possible, like a "Best Of" Dickens. It is one very substantial novel and stands alone as an exquisite masterpiece. Yet so many characters from his other novels seem to return here to be rounded out and more deeply developed. David Copperfield (himself) reminds me of Pip of Great Expectations, Betsey Trotwood of Miss Havisham, Mr. Micawber of Magwitch, and Agnes of Biddy. Mr. Murdstone seems to be of the Gradgrind line from Hard Times. One character reminded me not of another character in Dicken's work but of the vile character from Les Miserables (Victor Hugo) who repeatedly attempted to extort or do harm to Jean Valjean and Marius. It would be fun to have read all of Dicken's work before reading David Copperfield just to see Dicken's feelings of the various character types and what time has done to them in his mind. Of course, like any "Best Of", you could read only this one work and have a deep and abiding appreciation of Dickens without having read any of his others.
Rating:
Summary: A Novel with Heart
Review: David Copperfield was always a favorite of mine. It is wonderful, how, circling with the years, I can make my own retrospect and read it again from my older perspective. When I was younger, I too, wanted to complain that all of Dickens' heroines were the same, and now I realize how wrong I was. Agnes is good and beautiful and patient of course, but what about the heroine Aunt Betsey? What about Miss Mowcher, who gives David a piece of advice "from three foot nothing ... Don't confuse bodily defect with mental!" she exclaims, and this is advice we coudl still use today! What about Peggotty, who is true and good and occasionally silly? Then there are the women who are not so good: Mrs Heep, Miss Murdstone, Mrs Markleham (the Old Soldier) and Rosa Dartle? Dickens' characters are marvelous, but what I find most wonderful is the love that brings them together. Aunt Betsey takes David in, and is rewarded by the softening of her own heart; Mr. Peggotty seeks and finds his niece; Traddles finally marries "the dearest girl" and long-suffering Mrs Micawber will never desert her husband and something at last turns up Down Under. The characters who are courageous enough to choose love over pride are almost always rewarded at the end -- assuming that they survive, of course! (I'm thinking of Ham.) Perhaps it is just a novel, and those who have courage to love are not always rewarded in real life, but the idea is wonderfully satisfying.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a novel?
Review: I am trying to read the world's greatest novels as found on internet lists. David Copperfield seems to be less of a novel than a long series of episodes that are thinly related to each other. Few of the episodes propel the plot forward. I know that Dickens wrote serially for magazines and it shows. Many of the characters seem like two dimensional caricatures rather than real human beings. The plots seems melodramatic. Still, Dickens can write movingly. I don't think that this is a great novel but it is readable and allows some good insight into what Victorian England was like.
Rating:
Summary: EEEEEEEEEEEVVVVVVVVIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLL
Review: I hat this book it is the most detestible book ever written! If you make me read it AGAIN I will banish you to Brian Land and you will be my PERSONAL AID whenever I need you.
Rating: 
Summary: Great eccentric characters, victorian values wear thin
Review: I just finished reading DC, and although I enjoyed it, I was also heartily glad to be finished. The Victorian ideals did not wear well through such a long novel. I began to feel that Dicken's emotional values were creepy.
To me, Dickens showed himself in this book to be primarily concerned with moral education. He is holding up various models to the reader, in order to `form their character', although ironically, efforts to do so in the book are either evil (the Murdstones) or useless (David trying to give his bird-brained wife some character). Yet this is Dicken's passion: to teach us to be affectionate above all, utterly selfless, incapable of self-assertion (the highest praise he gives to Traddles and his perfect wife Sophy), simple as the madman Dick, kind and patient. These are Christian virtues, and yet religion per se is virtually absent in the book - oddly so, given how steeped it is in Christian self-abnegation and kindness. I almost wonder if Dickens were antireligious; I assume he was anticlerical given his critique of most social institutions. Yet Dickens himself is not so much a student of the human heart as a preacher. All his characters are there to teach a lesson.
Yet he carries you along as the reader with the pleasantness of his loving characters, the fun of the eccentric characters, and his powers of careful observation, which brings even cartoon-thin portrayals to life through original detail. His plot moves along, with many exciting incidents. He seems a primitive writer by todays standards, signaling crudely plot developments to come, and ham fistedly signaling what characters we are to admire, to pity or to loathe. All is done is broad strokes. At times his social satire and humor leaven the work. But mostly, it is his own goodness - his wish for happy, loving, tolerant relations, his desire to improve the world, that cast a pleasant glow on the work.
Still, three quarters through the book I perversely declared myself to be on Uriah Heep's side, and refused to let Dickens bludgeon me into believing Heep is evil. For what is Heep's overarching sin? The nightmare of Victorian society (of which Dickens professes to be critical in so many regards). Why, Heep is ambitious, he is upwardly mobile, he rebels against being `umble.' Dicken's paints Heep's means to success in wholly black colors - all rage and spite and jealousy and meanness, all cheating and blackguardery. But that is because this refusal to stay happily in one's place can have no positive colors in Dicken's imagination. (His own driving ambition as a writer did not make it into these pages.)
My favorite character is the Aunt, and my favorite scene, David's birth, when she puts cotton in her ears not to hear the mother's birth pains. I enjoyed the virtuous and happy fisherfolk, especially their cosy cottage which is an overturned boat, despite feeling it was awfully contrived, . The Happy Lower Classes, More Virtuous Than their Betters.
Most of the women characters lacked interest, and none won my empathy. (Dickens got me to cry more than once, but I can't say I really cared about his characters, not even David.) Agnes the Angel was too much Patient Griselda; Emily the fallen angel saved by forgiveness never came to life; the wicked women were flat as cardboard. I didn't believe in everyone's fondness for DC's `child-bride' because self-involved, vain, immature, shallow and lazy people - as she was - are not endearing, affectionate, and beloved. They are hard to take. I don't know if Dicken's was holding up a social ideal of the childish, spoiled woman, and trying gently to lead his readers to see her as inadequate.
Speaking of which, Dicken's himself definitely has a creepy repeated imaginative theme here about love and sex being mixed into father-daughter relations: we are given a beautiful love match between the old Doctor, seemingly 30 or even 40 years older than his lower class wife, who actually calls him her husband and father; Agnes replacing her mother in relation to her father; DC's `child-bride'; Emily and her clinging to her Uncle, and eventually foreswearing marriage to live with him. Traddle's and his wife are similar in age, but she is presented as a mother before marriage, taking care of her invalid mother and brood of 8. The only romance between those equal in age happens off-stage and is tragic, illicit and evil: Emily being seduced by DC's friend Steerforth. ( I wonder if when Dicken's left his wife and ten children for an actress, 8 years after this book was written, was the actress was 30 years younger? Answer - yes. She was 18 and he lived out the part of Steerforth himself. No wonder he has David being so tolerant of Steerforths ruining an entire family's happiness by his sexual predation of a young girl.)
The Micawbers again did not win me over - a pontificating loser of a lush, willing to ruin poor Traddles - yet we are to forgive him completely because, why? (Turns out he is modeled on Dicken's father.)
Which brings me to DC himself. DC is an anti-hero in 20th century terms: although he does eventually choose and embark on his own career as stenographer and then writer, the writer's amition and hard work is largely off-stage. What is on-stage is a person who relies on the kindness of others, who has no gumption or ambition, who is kind and dutiful and appreciative, who can't even assert himself with servants who steal his very clothes, and bursts into tears every other chapter if not more often. He chooses very stupidly in love, falling for a pretty face with an empty head (rather like his mother, but worse). As a child he is utterly helpless every time anyone wants to victimize him - not a resourceful impulse, let alone action - we are supposed to love him for his innocence and helplessness, but I would prefer a kid with quicker wits, more intiative, more courage, quicker fists, who solved some of his own problems
Rating:
Summary: Astonishing Classic; Irrefutably Powerful Novel
Review: I read Great Expectations years ago, but after reading that David Copperfield was Dicken's personal favorite book he had authored, I decided to try him again. From the beginning of the book, I was swept up in the ever changing lives of the central characters. I can understand why people waited anxiously for the next chapter when this book was released serially back in 1849 & 1850! There are many dramatic buildups and twists and turns that keep you turning the pages and wondering how it will all turn out. In this remarkabe novel, Dickens created an incredible cast of characters and painted a vivid portrait of 19th-century England. The characters are complex and interesting, and I found it satisfying that the characters who are courageous enough to choose love over pride are ultimately rewarded. If you are going to only read one book by Dickens, this is the one to choose. It is very interesting, memorable, and well written.
Rating:
Summary: A Memorable Book
Review: I read Great Expectations years ago, but after reading that David Copperfield was Dicken's personal favorite book he had authored, I decided to try him again. From the beginning of the book, I was swept up in the ever changing lives of the central characters. I can understand why people waited anxiously for the next chapter when this book was released serially back in 1849 & 1850! There are many dramatic buildups and twists and turns that keep you turning the pages and wondering how it will all turn out. In this remarkabe novel, Dickens created an incredible cast of characters and painted a vivid portrait of 19th-century England. The characters are complex and interesting, and I found it satisfying that the characters who are courageous enough to choose love over pride are ultimately rewarded. If you are going to only read one book by Dickens, this is the one to choose. It is very interesting, memorable, and well written.
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