David Copperfield is the timeless tale of a thoughtful orphan discovering how to live and love in a cutthroat, indifferent adult world. It firmly embraces all the eternal freshness, the comic delights, the tender warmth, and the ghastly horrors of childhood.

Of all Charles Dickens's novels, this is perhaps the most revealing, both of Dickens himself and of the society of his time. Certainly Copperfield's experiences—his early rejection, child labor in a warehouse, experience as a journalist, and final success as a novelist—are strikingly similar to Dickens's own. It is little wonder that Dickens said of it, "Of all my books I like this the best; like many fond parents I have in my heart of hearts a favorite child. And his name is David Copperfield."