Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born near Portsmouth, England on the 7th of February,
1812. Charles was the second of eight children born into what was a
middle-class British family. John Dickens, Charles' father, was a civil
servant, employed by the British Navy Pay Office. But John spent money
better than he made it, so that in Charles' 12th year, his father was arrested
and imprisoned to satisfy accumulated debts, and Charles was sent to work in
a warehouse, pasting labels onto pots of shoe-black.
Young Charles Dickens began his literary career at the age of 16, in 1828,
after completing a course in shorthand, when he secured his first position
as a full-time reporter in the London law courts. His first book, a two-volume
work entitled Sketches by Boz was published eight years later. His
first serialized novel, The Pickwick Papers followed closely on the
heels of Sketches by Boz and won his popularity in every
English-speaking nation.
Late in his life, Charles Dickens said that David Copperfield was
his best novel, his proudest accomplishment and his personal favourite. It
is the most autobiographical of his novels. Like David, Charles worked in
a warehouse where he performed the same job. Charles worked at that job while
his father (like Wilkins Micawber) was housed in the King's Prison for
non-payment of debts, but came to blame his mother for his suffering because of
her reluctance to allow him to quit the job when his father was finally
released from prison. It was Charles' father who insisted that he terminate
his employment after he had made his own inspection of the working conditions.
The character of Wilkins Micawber is one of two Dickens characters that are
said to be modeled upon his own father. The similarities of Charles' own
father to Mr. Micawber were not limited to the failure to match income with
expenditures. Mr. Micawber's vocabulary and florid manner of speech are also
said to be patterned after Charles' father.
Many other characters are also modeled after Dickens' own friends, family
and associates. Dora is named after an infant daughter that died just before
Dickens began the novel. One of David's workmates at the warehouse is modeled
after one of Charles' fellow workers at the warehouse, whose name is given
to a character in Oliver Twist.
David Copperfield is a novel full of richly developed characters
and many intertwined stories. It's a memorable read that will deliver many
hours of reading pleasure.
This is not a small book. As a single volume, the PalmReader version is
one megabyte in length. For the benefit of readers with older PDAs, I have
divided the book into three volumes, each of which is 350 kilobytes or less,
so that each volume can be loaded, along with the PalmReader, on a PDA with
as little as one megabyte of memory.
David Copperfield (1850)
David Copperfield, volume I
by Charles Dickens |
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David Copperfield, volume II
by Charles Dickens |
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David Copperfield, volume III
by Charles Dickens |
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Video Available
The classic celluloid version of David Copperfield was made in 1935
and starred Freddie Bartholomew (as David) and W.C. Fields (as Wilkins
Micawber). The video is available at
Amazon.
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More Dickens:
Pictures from Italy (1846)
An English gentleman takes the Grand Tour of Italy in 1844.
Pictures from Italy
by Charles Dickens |
Size: 230 KB |
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Bleak House (1853)
This is a story involving legal wrangling over a large inheritance. There
is also a romance (or two), a shameful secret and a criminal conspiracy. This
is presented as three volumes to accomodate older PDAs.
Bleak House, Volume I
by Charles Dickens |
Size: 427 KB |
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Bleak House, Volume II
by Charles Dickens |
Size: 387 KB |
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Bleak House, Volume III
by Charles Dickens |
Size: 237 KB |
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The BBC has produced several adaptations of
Bleak House in a mini-series format. The
most recent of these is an epic saga of fifteen
50-minute episodes.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870)
One of Dickens' last novels begins with a dream in an opium den.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
by Charles Dickens |
Size: 292 KB |
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You can also get a free copy of Charles Dickens'
A Christmas Carol and George Eliot's
Mill on the Floss on this site.
For a bibliography of the works of Charles Dickens, click
here.
These ebooks are formatted for the
eReader.
You can get a free copy of the eReader
here.
The eReader was formerly known as the
PalmReader.
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