David Copperfield

This is the novel Dickens regarded as his 'favourite child' and is considered his most autobiographical. As David recounts his experience from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist, Dickens draws openly and revealingly on his own life. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters are Rosa Dartle, Dora, Steerforth, and the 'umble Uriah Heep, along with Mr Micawber, a portrait of Dickens's own father which evokes the mixture of love, nostalgia and guilt.

Charles Dickens (1812-û1870), born one of eight children in Portsmouth, England, grew up in poverty and had little formal education, yet became the most prominent and revered of all English Victorian writers, as well as a political reporter and journalist.
Jeremy Tambling is professor of comparative literature at the University of Hong Kong.