Editing David Copperfield (section)

==Literary significance and reception==

Many view this novel as Dickens's [[masterpiece]], beginning with his friend and first biographer John Forster, who writes: "Dickens never stood so high in reputation as at the completion of Copperfield",<ref name=Forster1976p6>{{harvnb|Forster|1976|page=6}}</ref> and the author himself calls it "his favourite child".<ref>{{cite book |first=Charles |last=Dickens |title=David Copperfield |chapter=Preface |edition=1867 |location=London |publisher=Wordsworth Classics |page=4}}</ref><ref group="N">Conclusion of the preface of 1867: "Like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield."</ref> It is true, he says, that "underneath the fiction lay something of the author's life",<ref>{{harvnb|Dickens|1999|p=3}}</ref> that is, an experience of self-writing. It is therefore not surprising that the book is often placed in the category of autobiographical works. From a strictly literary point of view, however, it goes beyond this framework in the richness of its themes and the originality of its writing.

Situated in the middle of Dickens's career, it represents, according to Paul Davis, a turning point in his work, the point of separation between the novels of youth and those of maturity.<ref name=Davis1999>{{harvnb|Davis|1999|p= }}</ref> In 1850, Dickens was 38 years old and had twenty more to live, which he filled with other masterpieces, often denser, sometimes darker, that addressed most of the political, social and personal issues he faced.

==="The privileged child" of Dickens===
Dickens welcomed the publication of his work with intense emotion, and he continued to experience this until the end of his life. When he went through a period of personal difficulty and frustration in the 1850s, he returned to ''David Copperfield'' as to a dear friend who resembled him: "Why," he wrote to Forster, "Why is it, as with poor David, a sense comes always crashing on me now, when I fall into low spirits, as of one happiness I have missed in life, and one friend and companion I have never made?"<ref>Charles Dickens, ''Letters'', letter to John Forster, 3 and 4 (?) February 1855.</ref><ref group="N">It is likely here that Dickens refers to the failure of his marriage with [[Catherine Dickens|his wife]].</ref> When Dickens begins writing ''[[Great Expectations]]'', which was also written in the first person, he reread ''David Copperfield'' and confided his feelings to Forster: "was affected by it to a degree you would hardly believe".<ref>Charles Dickens, ''Letters'', Letter to John Forster, early October 1860.</ref> Criticism has not always been even-handed, though over time the high importance of this novel has been recognised.

===Initial reception===
Although Dickens became a Victorian celebrity his readership was mainly the middle classes, including the so-called skilled workers, according to the French critic Fabrice Bensimon, because ordinary people could not afford it.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Fabrice |last=Bensimon |title=La culture populaire au Royaume-Uni, 1800–1914 |trans-title=Popular Culture in the United Kingdom, 1800–1914 |journal=Revue d'Histoire Moderne & Contemporaine |year=2001 |volume=5 |number=48 |pages=75–91 |language=fr|doi=10.3917/rhmc.485.0075 }}</ref> Issues I to V of the serial version reached 25,000 copies in two years, modest sales compared to 32,000 ''Dombey and Son'' and 35,000 ''Bleak House'', but Dickens was nevertheless happy: "Everyone is cheering David on", he writes to Mrs Watson,<ref>Charles Dickens, ''Letters'', Letter to Mrs Watson, 3 July 1850.</ref> and, according to Forster, his reputation was at the top.<ref name=Forster1976p6 />

The first reviews were mixed,<ref>{{cite book |first=Paul |last=Schlicke |contribution=David Copperfield: Reception |title=Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens |editor-first=Paul |editor-last=Schlicke |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2000 |isbn=978-0198662532 <!-- Need URL for this: Published online: 2011 subscription needed. --> }}</ref> but the great contemporaries of Dickens showed their approval: [[William Makepeace Thackeray|Thackeray]] found the novel "freshly and simply simple";<ref>William Makepeace Thackeray, London, ''Punch'', number 16, 1849.</ref> [[John Ruskin]], in his ''[[Modern Painters]]'', was of the opinion that the scene of the storm surpasses Turner's evocations of the sea; more soberly, [[Matthew Arnold]] declared it "rich in merits";<ref name="Schlicke1999p153">{{harvnb|Schlicke|1999|p=153}}</ref> and, in his autobiographical book ''[[A Small Boy and Others]]'', [[Henry James]] evokes the memory of "treasure so hoarded in the dusty chamber of youth".<ref>Henry James, ''A Small Boy and Others'', 1913, cited by Barbara Arnett and Giorgio Melchiori, ''The Taste of Henry James'', 2001, p. 3.</ref>

===Subsequent reputation===
[[File:Adolf Schrödter Falstaff und sein Page.jpg|right|thumb|upright=0.8|Falstaff (Adolf Schrödter, 1867), to whom J. B. Priestley compares Mr Micawber.]]

After Dickens's death, ''David Copperfield'' rose to the forefront of the writer's works, both through sales, for example, in ''Household Words'' in 1872 where sales reached 83,000,<ref>{{harvnb|Collins|1996|p=619}}</ref> and the praise of critics. In 1871, Scottish novelist and poet [[Margaret Oliphant]] described it as "the culmination of Dickens's early comic fiction";<ref>Margaret Oliphant, ''[[Blackwood's Magazine]]'', number 109, 1871.</ref> However, in the late nineteenth-century Dickens's critical reputation suffered a decline, though he continued to have many readers. This began when [[Henry James]] in 1865 "relegated Dickens to the second division of literature on the grounds that he could not 'see beneath the surface of things'". Then in 1872, two years after Dickens's death, [[George Henry Lewes]] wondered how to "reconcile [Dickens's] immense popularity with the 'critical contempt' which he attracted".<ref name=Pykett2008p471>{{harvnb|Pykett|2008|p=471}}</ref> However, Dickens was defended by the novelist [[George Gissing]] in 1898 in ''Charles Dickens: A Critical Study''.<ref name=Pykett2008p471 /> G. K. Chesterton published an important defence of Dickens in his book ''Charles Dickens'' in 1906, where he describes him as this "most English of our great writers".<ref name=Pykett2008p473>{{harvnb|Pykett|2008|p=473}}</ref> Dickens's literary reputation grew in the 1940s and 1950s because of essays by [[George Orwell]] and [[Edmund Wilson]] (both published in 1940), and Humphrey House's ''The Dickens World'' (1941).<ref name=Pykett2008pp474>{{harvnb|Pykett|2008|pp=474–475}}</ref> However, in 1948, [[F. R. Leavis]] in ''[[The Great Tradition]]'', contentiously, excluded Dickens from his canon, characterising him as a "popular entertainer"<ref name=Leavis1948p244>{{harvnb|Leavis|1948|p=244}}</ref> without "mature standards and interests".<ref name=Leavis1948p132>{{harvnb|Leavis|1948|p=132}}</ref>

[[File:Wilkins Micawber from David Copperfield by Frank Reynolds.jpg|thumb|upright|Wilkins Micawber by Frank Reynolds, per [[W Somerset Maugham|Maugham]] "he never fails you."]]
Dickens's reputation, however, continued to grow and K. J. Fielding (1965) and Geoffrey Thurley (1976) identify what they call ''David Copperfield'''s "centrality", and [[Q. D. Leavis]] in 1970, looked at the images he draws of marriage, of women, and of moral simplicity.<ref name=Schlicke1999p154>{{harvnb|Schlicke|1999|p=154}}</ref> In their 1970 publication ''Dickens the Novelist'', F. R. and Q. D. Leavis called Dickens "one of the greatest of creative writers", and F. R. Leavis had changed his mind about Dickens since his 1948 work, no longer finding the popularity of the novels with readers as a barrier to their seriousness or profundity.<ref>{{harvnb|Pykett|2008|Page=476}}</ref> In 1968 Sylvère Monod, after having finely analyzed the structure and style of the novel, describe it as "the triumph of the art of Dickens",<ref name=Monod1968>{{cite book |first=Sylvère |last=Monod |title=Dickens the Novelist |url=https://archive.org/details/lish00sylv |url-access=registration |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |year=1968 |isbn=978-0806107684}}</ref> which analysis was shared by Paul B. Davis.<ref name=Davis1999p92>{{harvnb|Davis|1999|p=92}}</ref> The central themes are explored by Richard Dunne in 1981, including the autobiographical dimension, the narrator-hero characterization process, memory and forgetting, and finally the privileged status of the novel in the [[intertextuality|interconnection between similar works of Dickens]].<ref name=Schlicke1999p154 /> Q. D. Leavis compares ''Copperfield'' to [[Leo Tolstoy|Tolstoy's]] ''[[War and Peace]]'' and looks at adult-child relationships in both novels. According to writer Paul B. Davis, Q. D. Leavis excels at dissecting David's relationship with Dora.<ref name=Davis1999p92 /> Gwendolyn Needham in an essay, published in 1954, analyzes the novel as a [[bildungsroman]], as did Jerome H. Buckley twenty years later.<ref name=Davis1999p92 /> In 1987 [[Alexander Welsh]] devoted several chapters to show that ''Copperfield'' is the culmination of Dickens's autobiographical attempts to explore himself as a novelist in the middle of his career. Finally, [[J. B. Priestley]] was particularly interested in Mr Micawber and concludes that "With the one exception of [[Falstaff]], he is the greatest comic figure in English literature".<ref name=Priestley1966p242>{{harvnb|Priestley|1966|loc=Chap XIII p 242}}</ref>

In 2015, the [[BBC]] Culture section polled book critics outside the UK about novels by British authors; they ranked ''David Copperfield'' eighth on the list of the 100 Greatest British Novels.<ref name=Ciabattari2015>{{cite news |url=http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151204-the-100-greatest-british-novels |publisher=BBC Culture |title=The 100 greatest British novels |date=7 December 2015 |access-date=20 May 2019 |first=Jane |last=Ciabattari}}</ref> The characters and their varied places in society in the novel evoked reviewer comments, for example, the novel is "populated by some of the most vivid characters ever created,"  "David himself, Steerforth, Peggotty, Mr Dick – and it climbs up and down and off the class ladder.", remarked by critic [[Maureen Corrigan]] and echoed by [[Wendy Lesser]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151204-the-25-greatest-british-novels |title=8. David Copperfield (Charles Dickens, 1850) |publisher=BBC Culture: The 25 Greatest British Novels |last=Ciabattari |first=Jane |date=7 December 2015 |access-date=20 May 2019 }}</ref>

===Opinions of other writers===
''David Copperfield'' has pleased many writers. [[Charlotte Brontë]], for example, commented in 1849 in a letter to the reader of her publisher: "I have read ''David Copperfield''; it seems to me very good—admirable in some parts. You said it had affinity to ''[[Jane Eyre]]'': it has—now and then—only what an advantage has Dickens in his varied knowledge of men and things!"<ref>Charlotte Brontë, Letter to W S Williams, 13 September 1849, cited by {{cite book |first=Patricia H |last=Wheat |title=The Adytum of the Heart: The Literary Criticism of Charlotte Brontë |location=Cranbury, New Jersey, London and Mississauga, Ontario |publisher=Associated University Presses |year=1952 |pages=33, 121 |isbn=978-0-8386-3443-1}}</ref> Tolstoy, for his part, considered it "the best work of the best English novelist" and, according to [[F. R. Leavis]] and Q. D. Leavis, was inspired by David and Dora's love story to have Prince Andrew marry Princess Lise in ''War and Peace''.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Tom |last=Cain |title=Tolstoy's Use of David Copperfield  |journal=Critical Quarterly |volume=15 |number=3 |date=September 1973 |pages=237–246|doi=10.1111/j.1467-8705.1973.tb01474.x }}</ref> [[Henry James]] remembered being moved to tears, while listening to the novel, hidden under a table, read aloud in the family circle.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/05/lodge.htm |magazine=The Atlantic |title=Dickens Our Contemporary, review of 'Charles Dickens' by Jane Smiley |last=Lodge |first=David |date=May 2002 |access-date=25 July 2012}}</ref> [[Fyodor Dostoevsky|Dostoevsky]] enthusiastically cultivated the novel in a prison camp in Siberia.<ref>{{cite web |first1=Irina |last1=Gredina |first2=Philip V |last2=Allingham |title=Dickens's Influence upon Dostoyevsky, 1860–1870; or, One Nineteenth-Century Master's Assimilation of Another's Manner and Vision |url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/gredina.html |work=The Victorian Web |access-date=26 July 2012}}</ref> [[Franz Kafka]] wrote in his diary in 1917, that the first chapter of his novel ''[[Amerika (novel)|Amerika]]'' was inspired by ''David Copperfield''.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Kafka's Imitation of David Copperfield |last=Tedlock, Jr |first=E W |journal=Comparative Literature |volume=7 |number=1 |date=Winter 1955 |pages=52–62 |doi=10.2307/1769062 |publisher=Duke University Press |jstor=1769062 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=David Copperfield as Psychological Fiction |last=Spilka |first=Mark |date=December 1959 |journal=Critical Quarterly |volume=1 |issue=4 |pages=292–301 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-8705.1959.tb01590.x }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Spilka |first=Mark |date=Winter 1959 |volume=16 |number=4 |pages=367–378 |journal=American Imago |title=Kafka and Dickens: The Country Sweetheart |jstor=26301688 }}</ref><ref group="N">Kafka's novel is a kind of inverted bildungsroman, since the young man whose destiny we follow is more of a disaster than an accomplishment.</ref> [[James Joyce]] parodied it in ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]''.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Wheale |first=J |year=1980 |title=More Metempsychosis? The Influence of Charles Dickens on James Joyce. |journal=James Joyce Quarterly |volume=17 |number=4 |pages=439–444 |access-date=May 3, 2021 |jstor=25476324  |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25476324 }}</ref> [[Virginia Woolf]], who was not very fond of Dickens, states that ''David Copperfield'', along with ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'', Grimm's fairy tales, [[Walter Scott|Scott]]'s ''[[Waverley (novel)|Waverley]]'' and ''[[The Pickwick Papers|Pickwick's Posthumous Papers]]'', "are not books, but stories communicated by word of mouth in those tender years when fact and fiction merge, and thus belong to the memories and myths of life, and not to its aesthetic experience."<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.woolfonline.com/?node=content/contextual/transcriptions&project=1&parent=45&taxa=46&content=6157&pos=3 |first=Virginia |last=Woolf |title=David Copperfield |journal=The Nation and Athenaeum |date=22 August 1925 |pages=620–21 |access-date=20 February 2019}}</ref> Woolf also noted in a letter to Hugh Walpole in 1936, that she is re-reading it for the sixth time: "I'd forgotten how magnificent it is."<ref>Virginia Woolf, Letter to Hugh Walpole, 8 February 1936.</ref> It also seems that the novel was [[Sigmund Freud]]'s favourite;<ref>{{cite journal |title=A Psychoanalytic Dictionary of David Copperfield |last=Jaeger |first=Peter |date=1 September 2015 |volume=64 |number=246 |journal=English: Journal of the English Association |pages=204–206 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/english/efv018 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |first=Bradley |last=Philbert |year=2012 |url=http://bradleyphilbert.com/writing/charles-beget-david-beget-david-beget-david/ |work=Bradley Philbert |title=Sigmund Freud and ''David Copperfield'' |access-date=24 July 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130825131340/http://bradleyphilbert.com/writing/charles-beget-david-beget-david-beget-david/ |archive-date=25 August 2013 |url-status=dead }}</ref> and [[W. Somerset Maugham|Somerset Maugham]] sees it as a "great" work, although his hero seems to him rather weak, unworthy even of its author, while Mr Micawber never disappoints: "The most remarkable of them is, of course, Mr Micawber. He never fails you."<ref>{{cite book |first1=William Somerset |last1=Maugham |title=Great novelists and their novels: essays on the ten greatest novels of the world and the men and women who wrote them |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.186265 |publisher=J C Winston Co |year=1948 |page=[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.186265/page/n176 181]}}</ref>