David Copperfield is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from anunhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr. Murdstone; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble yet treacherous Uriah Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora; and the magnificently impecunious Micawber, one of literature's great comic creations. In David Copperfield—the novel he described as his "favorite child"—Dickens drew revealingly on his own experiences to create one of his most exuberant and enduringly popular works, filled with tragedy and comedy in equal measure.

Author Biography: Charles Dickens (1812-1870), 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.