David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Published 1850 · 776 pages · 359,353 words · about 24 hours at an average pace · Coming-of-Age, Literary Fiction, Victorian Literature

How hard is David Copperfield to read?

David Copperfield scores 48 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
Victorian vocabulary with some archaic terms; Dickens writes for a popular audience but assumes literacy.
Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
Long, elaborate sentences with multiple clauses; Dickens's periodic style builds to rhetorical climaxes.
Abstraction: 45 out of 100
Concrete and sensory; Dickens thinks in images and characters rather than abstractions.
Information density: 48 out of 100
Expansive Victorian pacing with detailed description; density comes from character proliferation.
Narrative indirection: 42 out of 100
First-person narration is direct and confiding; David guides readers explicitly through his story.
Symbolic density: 52 out of 100
Characters often embody moral qualities; the sea carries symbolic weight in Emily's story.
Ironic distance: 48 out of 100
Dickens satirizes villainy and pretension but treats David with sincere sympathy.
Resolution withholding: 35 out of 100
Victorian plotting delivers clear moral resolution; virtue is rewarded, villainy exposed.
Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
Linear chronological narrative with multiple subplots converging; serial structure is visible.

How David Copperfield is regarded

David Copperfield holds a literary regard score of 92 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where David Copperfield sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (686 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, David Copperfield scores 58 out of 100. A second mythos, tragedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
Symbol: Formal
Altogether, I have never, on any occasion, made one at such a cosey, dosey, old-fashioned, time-forgotten, sleepy-headed little family-party in all my life
Mythos: Normal Comedy iii (comedy iii)
O, we were happy, we were happy!
Genre: Novel + Confession
for, as I have elsewhere said, this narrative is my written memory.

Where the story of David Copperfield takes place

  • England, Suffolk, Yarmouth, London and Kent, c. 1820-1850 (1820 to 1850), the main setting
  • Swiss Alps and Italy, David's grief-journey (1840 to 1844)
  • Port Middlebay, Australia, the emigrants' colony (1840 to 1855)

5 things that are true of David Copperfield, with the passage for each

  1. David is born on a Friday at midnight, an hour the neighbourhood women take as ill-luck.

    I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night.

  2. As a boy David bites through Mr. Murdstone's hand while being beaten.

    I caught the hand with which he held me in my mouth, between my teeth, and bit it through.

  3. Mr. Micawber's famous advice sets annual income of twenty pounds against nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence of spending.

    Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness.

  4. Uriah Heep ends up as a model prisoner known only as Number Twenty Seven.

    whom should Traddles and I then behold, to our amazement, in this converted Number Twenty Seven, but Uriah Heep!

  5. Agnes declares she has loved David all her life when he proposes.

    I have loved you all my life!

Scenes in David Copperfield that Frye would name

53 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Pathos, untitled
There was no need to tell me so. I had already broken out into a desolate cry, and felt an orphan in the wide world. The death of David's mother is the first pathos scene.
Anagnorisis, untitled
'For the Lord's love,' said Mr. Peggotty, falling back, and putting out his hand, as if to keep off what he dreaded. 'Doen't tell me his name's Steerforth!' The seducer's identity is revealed and pivots the middle of the book.
Cognitio, untitled
I thank my Heav'nly Father as my dream's come true! I thank Him hearty for having guided of me, in His own ways, to my darling! Em'ly is found and restored to her uncle, restoring the broken household.
Pathos, untitled
but he had been beaten to death by the great wave, and his generous heart was stilled for ever. Ham's sacrificial death in the attempt to save a man on the wreck.
Anagnorisis, untitled
I have loved you all my life! David discovers that Agnes has always loved him and that his own long blindness is over.
Confession, untitled
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. The introverted autobiographical frame is set at the start.

Books that share these scenes with David Copperfield

About the author

Charles Dickens