Search

David Copperfield is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist.

Presents Charles Dickens's classic novel set in London and Paris during the French Revolution and includes explanatory notes, an author chronology, a historical time line, a theme and plot outline, contemporary and modern critical analyses, discussion questions, and a list of related books and films.

Opening in the swirling mists of London, the novel revolves around a court case that has dragged on for decades?the infamous Jarndyce and Jarndyce lawsuit, in which an inheritance is gradually devoured by legal costs.

The doings and foibles of the Pickwick Club, headed by Pickwick and his faithful manservant.

Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, school headmaster in Cokestown, a northern English village beset by industrialism, runs his family and his school with a rigid adherence to facts, but his daughter's loveless marriage, his son's involvement with gambling and robbery, and his encounters with a variety of characters, force him to recognize the value of the human heart.