Editing David Copperfield (section)

===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>