David Copperfield (Bantam Classics) - Softcover

Dickens, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553211897 ISBN 13: 9780553211894

Publisher: Bantam Classics, 1981

Synopsis

Of all Dickens's novels, David Copperfield most fervently embraces the comic delights, the tender warmth, the tragic horrors of childhood. It is our classic tale of growing up, an enchanting story of a gently orphan discovering life and love in an indifferent adult world. Persecuted by his wrathful stepfather, Mr. Murdstone; deceived by his boyhood idol, the callous, charming Steerforth; driven into mortal combat with the sniveling clerk Uriah Heep; and hurled, pell-mell, into a blizzard of infatuation with the adorably dim-witted Dora, he survives the worst—and the best—with inimitable style, his bafflement tuming to self-awareness and his unbridles young heart growing ever more disciplined and true.

Of this richly autobiographical novel Dickens himself wrote, "like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favorite child. And his name is David Copperfield."

About this title

From the Back Cover

In a preface to this novel, Dickens described David Copperfield as his “favorite child,” and the story has remained among the favorites of Dickens’ readers, too, with the characters of Betsy Trotwood, Mr. Pegotty, Uriah Heep, and Wilkins Micawber as well as David himself becoming part of the fabric of Western culture. This facsimile reprint is of the Household Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens, published in the 1870s; the edition makes the work available again in a form in which tens of thousands of Victorians read it―in two-column format, interspersed with illustrations throughout.

David Copperfield was originally published in nineteen monthly parts between May 1, 1849 and November 1, 1850.* Each part except the last was of roughly the same length; the final installment was approximately twice as long as the others (and sold for 2 shillings, twice the price of previous parts). For the original serial publication, as well as early publication in book form, David Copperfield was illustrated by Hablot Browne (more commonly known as “Phiz”).

Shortly after Dickens’ death in 1870 the British publisher Chapman & Hall began to issue the Household Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens (not to be confused with the American Household Edition of the Works, which appeared in the 1860s). The principal illustrator for the edition was Fred Barnard, and the Dalziel brothers (the leading wood-engravers of the time) created the engravings from Barnard’s illustrations; they described The Household Edition as “by far the most important commission ever placed in our hands by Messrs. Chapman & Hall.” Volumes in The Household Edition began to appear in 1871, and the series was completed in 1879. Dickens’ works appeared in a great many Victorian editions (including numerous pirated ones). Scholars have understandably paid most attention to the earliest publication in serial form; The Household Edition may well have been the most popular form in which the novel appeared, however; the plates for The Household Edition were widely used for other editions as well, and it is certainly arguable that more Victorian readers would have read Dickens’ novels in this form than in any other. In 1911 the populist bibliophile J.A. Hammerton described The Household Edition as “the most important illustrated edition” of Dickens’ works.

This is one of a series from Broadview Press of facsimile editions―editions that provide readers with a direct sense of these works as the Victorians themselves experienced them.

The breaks were as follows: I – May 1849 (chs. 1–3); II – June 1849 (chs. 4–6); III – July 1849 (chs. 7–9); IV – August 1849 (chs. 10–12); V – September 1849 (chs. 13–15); VI – October 1849 (chs. 16–18); VII – November 1849 (chs. 19–21); VIII – December 1849 (chs. 22–24); IX – January 1850 (chs. 25–27); X – February 1850 (chs. 28–31); XI – March 1850 (chs. 32–34); XII – April 1850 (chs. 35–37); XIII – May 1850 (chs. 38–40); XIV – June 1850 (chs. 41–43); XV – July 1850 (chs. 44–46); XVI – August 1850 (chs. 47–50); XVII – September 1850 (chs. 51–53); XVIII – October 1850 (chs. 54–57); XIX-XX – November 1850 (chs. 58–64).

About the Author

Charles Dickens was born in a little house in Landport, Portsea, England, on February 7, 1812. The second of eight children, he grew up in a family frequently beset by financial insecurity. At age eleven, Dickens was taken out of school and sent to work in London backing warehouse, where his job was to paste labels on bottles for six shillings a week. His father John Dickens, was a warmhearted but improvident man. When he was condemned the Marshela Prison for unpaid debts, he unwisely agreed that Charles should stay in lodgings and continue working while the rest of the family joined him in jail. This three-month separation caused Charles much pain; his experiences as a child alone in a huge city–cold, isolated with barely enough to eat–haunted him for the rest of his life.

When the family fortunes improved, Charles went back to school, after which he became an office boy, a freelance reporter and finally an author. With Pickwick Papers (1836-7) he achieved immediate fame; in a few years he was easily the post popular and respected writer of his time. It has been estimated that one out of every ten persons in Victorian England was a Dickens reader. Oliver Twist (1837), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9) and The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41) were huge successes. Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4) was less so, but Dickens followed it with his unforgettable, A Christmas Carol (1843), Bleak House (1852-3), Hard Times (1854) and Little Dorrit (1855-7) reveal his deepening concern for the injustices of British Society. A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860-1) and Our Mutual Friend (1864-5) complete his major works.

Dickens’s marriage to Catherine Hoggarth produced ten children but ended in separation in 1858. In that year he began a series of exhausting public readings; his health gradually declined. After putting in a full day’s work at his home at Gads Hill, Kent on June 8, 1870, Dickens suffered a stroke, and he died the following day.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Classics
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 0553211897
• ISBN 13: 9780553211894
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 960