David Copperfield

David Copperfield tells his own life, from a happy early childhood with his young widowed mother and their loving servant Peggotty, through the cruelty of his stepfather Mr Murdstone and a miserable job in a London warehouse at the age of ten, to his escape on foot to his eccentric aunt Betsey Trotwood in Dover. He grows up, goes to school, falls in love with the charming but helpless Dora, and becomes a writer, surrounded by unforgettable people: the always hopeful Mr Micawber, waiting for something to turn up, the 'umble' and scheming Uriah Heep, the dazzling Steerforth and the faithful Agnes.

Published in 1849 and 1850, it was the novel Dickens loved best, his 'favourite child', and the warehouse episode draws on his own childhood labour in a blacking factory, a secret he told almost no one. It is the best book to begin Dickens with. Its darker twin, also told by its hero, is Great Expectations.

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) worked in a boot-blacking factory as a boy while his father was in a debtors' prison, and poverty and wronged childhood run through his novels, from Oliver Twist to the largely autobiographical David Copperfield.

Published in instalments, books such as A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol mixed comedy and social protest.