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Search - Works: The Personal History Of David Copperfield: Vol. I.

Works The Personal History Of David Copperfield Vol I
Author: Charles Dickens

The Personal History DAVID COPPERFIELD By CHARLES DICKENS WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY ANDREW LANG In Two Vols.-Vol. I. WITH THE ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATlONS -- 1897 -- INTRODUCDICKENScJ led David Copper eZd his cc favourite child. He was wiser than most parents or authors in his choice of a favourite. It is curious and amusing to see how men of gen... more »ius, even, are misguided. The tragedian prefers his comedy the conledian his tragic efirts the statesman his literary attempts the painter, like Turner, his essays in poetry. An author is wont to be prejudiced in favour of that effort in which his aim has been highest, and his labour most assiduous and prolonged. The difficult birth is the dearest. Now, in any art, above all, where genius is engaged, the work done most flueiltly and easily is apt to be the best. But the writer is fond of the child of a painful intellectual travail. 111 Dickenss case, CopprrjeW came to him easily. The story bore him ii-resistibly along certainly with less trouble to himself in the coniposition . . . and he was probably never less harassed by interruptions and breaks in his narrative, says Mr. Forster. Iet Dickens made the book his favourite, agreeing, probably, with the insjority of his genuine admirers. They who prefer A Tak of Truo Cities merely prove themselves no true Dickensians. Had we to lose all Dickenss I. b books but one, the choice vould be l ard between Copper jield and Pickzoick. But Pickzuick would probably carry the day. Mr. Forster seems to llare suggested a tale told in the first person the narrator being the hero. His own reiniuiscences of a neglected childhood then awoke in the memory and fancy of Dickens. He recalled the days of the debtors prison, of the blacking shop, of the lonely, self-supporting child, mith his tiny budget and feats of housekeeping, his sense of being degraded by his environment, and of the something there within him, which And Ch6niei8 spoke of on the scarold. All this he has iliade immortal in Copper-eZd mith the most tender pity and humour. It is a book for a boy how happy were the childish days spent with the child , and a book for ct man. In his father Dickens had a type for Mr. nlicawber, and surely the father himself could not have objected to the glorious and courageous waif, the unsoured and indomitable innocent adventurer, who blossomed out of his milder eccentricities. Miss Mowcher came perilously near being a case of Harold Skimpole and Leigh Hunt, but Dickens modified the character, and inollified the little original. Cllaracters, in fiction, all start from a germ of obsemed reality Mrs. Nickleby was Mrs. Dickens re, but she never recognised llerself, and if Mr. Micawber had done so, he would have smiled. Unluckily, Leigll Hunt was too generally recognisable the original hurried the artist beyond bounds. David Coppcrfield, however, is doubtless even less Dickens himself than Pen is Thackeray. Dickens was thinking over Copperfield at the close of 1848. Early in January, 1849, he, with Le111011 and Leech, visited tlie scene of the Rush murder, and Dickens saw and fell in love with ITannouth the stsai gestp lace ill the wide world. INT1iOI UCTION. vii I shall cerLzinly try 111y hallcl at it. Then came the usual struggle to find a name, beginning with MAGS DIVERSIONS, BEING T HE PERSONHAITS, T OIL OF Y MR. T HOJL A I S A G TH E l T o u OF i tR, I . UXDERSTO H NE O USE. On February 20, 1849, Dickens sent to Forster a list of names that actually chosen is decidedly the best. But he felt initial difficulties, I am lumbering on like a stagewaggon . . . I am quite aground, in the first Nulnber April 19. The reader does not discover this. We are at once in the tide of the story there is none of the early difficulty of Chtlzzlezoit...

ISBN-13: 9781408621585
ISBN-10: 1408621584
Publication Date: 1/31/2008
Pages: 572
Rating:

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Publisher: Read Books
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
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