Editing David Copperfield (section)

===Last incidents in the writing===
Although plunged into the writing of his novel, Dickens set out to create a new journal, ''[[Household Words]]'',<ref>Charles Dickens, ''Letters'', Letter to John Forster, 22 September 1849</ref> the first issue of which appeared on 31 March 1850. This daunting task, however, did not seem to slow down the writing of ''David Copperfield'': I am "busy as a bee", he writes happily to the actor [[William Macready]].<ref>Charles Dickens, ''Letters'', Letter to William Macready, 11 June 1850</ref>

A serious incident occurred in December: Mrs Jane Seymour Hill, [[chiropractor]] to [[Catherine Dickens|Mrs Dickens]],<ref name="Page_Perdue">{{cite web |url=http://charlesdickenspage.com/copperfield.html |work=The Charles Dickens Page |title=Miss Mowcher, Oops |last=Perdue |first=David A |year=2012 |access-date=28 June 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120829190736/http://charlesdickenspage.com/copperfield.html |archive-date=29 August 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref> raised the threat of prosecution, because she recognised herself in the portrait of Miss Mowcher; Dickens did not do badly,<ref>Charles Dickens, ''Letters'', Letter to Mrs Seymour, 18 December 1849</ref> gradually modifying the psychology of the character by making her less of a caricature and, at the very end of the novel, by making her a friend of the protagonist, whereas at the beginning she served rather contrary purposes.<ref name="Page_Perdue" /> This was, writes Harry Stone, "the only major departure from his original plans".<ref>{{harvnb|Stone|1968|p=232}}</ref>

His third daughter was born on 16 August 1850, called Dora Annie Dickens, the same name as his character's first wife. The baby died nine months later after the last serial was issued and the book was published.<ref name=Schlicke1999p151 />

Dickens marked the end of his manuscript on 21 October 1850<ref name=Schlicke1999p151 /> and felt both torn and happy like every time he finished a novel: "Oh, my dear Forster, if I were to say half of what ''Copperfield'' makes me feel to-night, how strangely, even to you, I should be turned inside out! I seem to be sending some part of myself into the Shadowy World."<ref>Charles Dickens, ''Letters'', Letter to John Forster, 21 October 1850</ref><ref name=Schlicke1999p151 />

At first glance, the work is modelled in the loose and somewhat disjointed way of "personal histories" that was very popular in the United Kingdom of the 18th century;<ref name=TomJones group="N">For example, those of ''[[Joseph Andrews]]'' or ''[[Tom Jones (novel)|Tom Jones]]'' written by [[Henry Fielding]], Dickens's favorite past author.</ref> but in reality, ''David Copperfield'' is a carefully structured and unified novel. It begins, like other novels by Dickens, with a rather bleak painting of the conditions of childhood in Victorian England, notoriously when the troublesome children are parked in infamous boarding schools, then he strives to trace the slow social and intimate ascent of a young man who, painfully providing for the needs of his good aunt while continuing his studies, ends up becoming a writer: the story, writes Paul Davis, of "a Victorian everyman seeking self-understanding".<ref name=Davis1999p85 />