《大卫·科波菲尔》是英国小说家查尔斯·狄更斯的第八部长篇小说，被称为他“心中最宠爱的孩子”，于一八四九至一八五O年间，分二十个部分逐月发表全书采用第一人称叙事语气，其中融进了作者本人的许多生活经历。狄更斯出身社会底层，祖父、祖母都长期在克鲁勋爵府当佣人。父亲约翰是海军军需处职员，在狄更斯十二岁那年，因负债无力偿还，带累妻子儿女和他一起住进了马夏尔西债务人监狱。当时狄更斯在泰晤士河畔的华伦黑鞋油作坊当童工，比他大两岁的姐姐范妮在皇家音乐学院学习，全家人中只有他俩没有在狱中居住。父亲出狱后，狄更斯曾一度进惠灵顿学校学习，不久又因家贫而永久辍学，十五岁时进律师事务所当学徒。后来，他学会速记，被伦敦民事律师议会聘为审案记录员。一八三一至一八三二年间，狄更斯先后担任《议会镜报》和《真阳报》派驻议会的记者。这些经历有助于他日后走上写作的道路。他一生所受学校教育不足四年，他的成功全靠自己的天才、勤奋以及艰苦生活的磨练。一八三六年，狄更斯终于以长篇小说《匹克威克外传》而名满天下，当时他年仅二十四岁。
　　
　　一八四八年，范妮因患肺结核早逝，她的死使狄更斯非常悲伤，因为在众多兄弟姐妹中，只有他俩在才能、志趣上十分接近。他俩都有杰出的表演才能，童年时曾随父亲到罗彻斯特的米特尔饭店，站在大餐桌上表演歌舞，赢得众人的赞叹。范妮死后，狄更斯写下一篇七千字的回忆文章，记录他俩一起度过的充满艰辛的童年。狄更斯身后，他的好友福斯特在《狄更斯传》中首次向公众披露了狄更斯的早年，小说，根据的正是这篇回忆。狄更斯写这篇回忆是为创作一部自传体长篇小说做准备。他小说主人公取过许多名字，最后才想到“大卫·科波菲尔”。福斯特听了，立刻叫好，因为这个名字的缩写D.C.正是作者名字缩写的颠倒。于是小说主人公的名字便定了下来。
　　
　　狄更斯早期作品大多是结构松散的“流浪汉传奇”，足凭借灵感信笔挥洒的即兴创作，而本书则是他的中期作品，更加注重结构技巧和艺术的分寸感。狄更斯在本书第十一章中，把他的创作方法概括为“经验想象，糅合为一”。他写小说，并不拘泥于临摹实际发生的事，而是充分发挥想象力，利用生活素材进行崭新的创造。尽管书中大卫幼年时跟母亲学字母的情景是他本人的亲身经历，大卫在母亲改嫁后，在极端孤寂的环境中阅读的正是他本人在那个年龄所读的书，母亲被折磨死后，大卫被送去当童工的年龄也正是狄更斯当童工时的年龄，然而，小说和实事完全不同：狄更斯不是孤儿，而他笔下的大卫却是“遗腹子”。同时，狄更斯又把自己父母的某些性格糅进了大卫的房东、推销商米考伯夫妇身上。
　　
　　大卫早年生活的篇章以孩子的心理视角向我们展示了一个早已被成年人淡忘的童年世界，写得十分真切感人。例如：大卫以儿童特殊的敏感对追求母亲的那个冷酷、残暴、贪婪的商人默德斯东一开始就怀有敌意，当默德斯东虚情假意地伸手拍拍大卫时，他发现那只手放肆地碰到母亲的手，便生气地把它推开。大卫向母亲复述默德斯东带他出去玩时的情景，当他说到默德斯东的一个朋友在谈话中老提起一位“漂亮的小寡妇”时，母亲一边笑着，一边要他把当时的情景讲了一遍又一遍。叙事完全从天真无邪的孩子的视角出发，幼儿并不知道人家讲的就是自己的母亲，而年轻寡妇要求再醮、对幸福生活的热烈憧憬已跃然纸上。又如：大卫跟保姆佩葛蒂到她哥哥家去玩，她的哥哥辟果提先生是一位渔民。大卫看见他从海上作业后回来洗脸，觉得他与虾蟹具有某种相似之处，因为那张黑脸被热水一烫，立刻就发红了。这个奇特的联想，充满童趣和狄更斯特有的幽默。

　　David Copperfield or The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (which he never meant to publish on any account) is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a novel in 1850. Like most of his works, it originally appeared in serial form a year earlier. Many elements within the novel follow events in Dickens' own life, and it is probably the most autobiographical of all of his novels. In the preface to the 1867 Charles Dickens edition, he wrote, "… like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield."
　　
　　Plot summary
　　
　　The story deals with the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. David is born in England in about 1820. David's father had died six months before he was born, and seven years later, his mother marries Mr Edward Murdstone. David is given good reason to dislike his stepfather and has similar feelings for Mr Murdstone's sister Jane, who moves into the house soon afterwards. Mr Murdstone thrashes David for falling behind with his studies. Following one of these thrashings, David bites him and is sent away to a boarding school, Salem House, with a ruthless headmaster, Mr. Creakle. Here he befriends James Steerforth and Tommy Traddles, both of whom he meets again later on.
　　
　　David returns home for the holidays to find out that his mother has had a baby boy. Soon after David goes back to Salem House, his mother and her baby die and David has to return home immediately. Mr Murdstone sends him to work in a factory in London, of which Murdstone is a joint owner. The grim reality of hand-to-mouth factory existence echoes Dickens' own travails in a blacking factory. His landlord, Mr Wilkins Micawber, is sent to a debtor's prison (the King's Bench Prison) after going bankrupt, and is there for several months before being released and moving to Plymouth. David now has nobody left to care for him in London, and decides to run away.
　　
　　He walks all the way from London to Dover, to find his only relative, his aunt Miss Betsey. The eccentric Betsey Trotwood agrees to bring him up, despite Mr Murdstone visiting in a bid to regain custody of David. David's aunt renames him 'Trotwood Copperfield', soon shortened to "Trot", and for the rest of the novel he is called by either name, depending on whether he is communicating with someone he has known for a long time, or someone he has only recently met.
　　
　　The story follows David as he grows to adulthood, and is enlivened by the many well-known characters who enter, leave and re-enter his life. These include Peggotty, his faithful former housekeeper for his mother, her family, and their orphaned niece Little Em'ly who lives with them and charms the young David. David's romantic but self-serving schoolfriend, Steerforth, seduces and dishonors Little Em'ly, triggering the novel's greatest tragedy; and his landlord's daughter and ideal "angel in the house," Agnes Wickfield, becomes his confidante. The two most familiar characters are David's sometime mentor, the constantly debt-ridden Mr Wilkins Micawber, and the devious and fraudulent clerk, Uriah Heep, whose misdeeds are eventually discovered with Micawber's assistance. Micawber is painted as a sympathetic character, even as the author deplores his financial ineptitude; and Micawber, like Dickens's own father, is briefly imprisoned for insolvency.
　　
　　In typical Dickens fashion, the major characters get some measure of what they deserve, and few narrative threads are left hanging. Dan Peggotty safely transports Little Em'ly to a new life in Australia; accompanying these two central characters are Mrs. Gummidge and the Micawbers. Everybody involved finally finds security and happiness in their new lives in Australia. David first marries the beautiful but naïve Dora Spenlow, but she dies after failing to recover from a miscarriage early in their marriage. David then does some soul-searching and eventually marries and finds true happiness with the sensible Agnes, who had secretly always loved him. They have several children, including a daughter named in honor of Betsey Trotwood.
　　Analysis
　　
　　The story is told almost entirely from the point of view of the first person narrator, David Copperfield himself, and was the first Dickens novel to be written as such a narration.
　　
　　Critically, it is considered a Bildungsroman, i.e., a novel of self-cultivation, and would be influential in the genre which included Dickens's own Great Expectations (1861), Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, published only two years prior, Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh, H. G. Wells's Tono-Bungay, D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, and James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
　　
　　Tolstoy regarded Dickens as the best of all English novelists, and considered Copperfield to be his finest work, ranking the "Tempest" chapter (chapter 55, LV – the story of Ham and the storm and the shipwreck) the standard by which the world's great fiction should be judged. Henry James remembered hiding under a small table as a boy to hear instalments read by his mother. Dostoyevsky read it enthralled in a Siberian prison camp. Franz Kafka called his first book Amerika a "sheer imitation". James Joyce paid it reverence through parody in Ulysses. Virginia Woolf, who normally had little regard for Dickens, confessed the durability of this one novel, belonging to "the memories and myths of life". It was Freud's favourite novel.
　　Characters in David Copperfield
　　
　　 * David Copperfield – An optimistic, diligent, and persevering character, he is the protagonist. He is later called "Trotwood Copperfield" by some ("David Copperfield" is also the name of the hero's father, who dies before David is born). He has many nicknames: James Steerforth nicknames him "Daisy", Dora calls him "Doady", and his aunt refers to him, as a reference to his would-be sister (if he had been born a girl), in and on "Trot" – as in Betsey Trotwood Copperfield.
　　 * Clara Copperfield – David's kind mother, described as being innocently childish, who dies while David is at Salem House. She dies just after the birth of her second child, who dies along with her.
　　 * Peggotty – The faithful servant of the Copperfield family and a lifelong companion to David (referred to at times as Mrs. Barkis after her marriage to Mr. Barkis). Inherits £3,000—a large sum in the mid-19th century—when Mr. Barkis dies. After his death, she becomes Betsey Trotwood's servant.
　　 * Betsey Trotwood – David's eccentric and temperamental yet kindhearted great-aunt; she becomes his guardian after he runs away from Grinby and Murdstone's warehouse in Blackfriars (London). She is present on the night of David's birth but leaves after hearing that Clara Copperfield's child is a boy instead of a girl.
　　 * Mr. Chillip – A shy doctor who assists at David's birth and faces the wrath of Betsey Trotwood after he informs her that Clara's baby is a boy instead of a girl.
　　 * Mr. Barkis – An aloof carter who declares his intention to marry Peggotty. He says to David: "Tell her, 'Barkis is willin'!' Just so." He is a bit of a miser, and hides his surprisingly vast liquid wealth in a plain box labeled "Old Clothes". He bequeaths to his wife the then astronomical sum of £3,000 when he dies about ten years later.
　　 * Edward Murdstone – Young David's cruel stepfather, who canes him for falling behind in his studies. David reacts by biting Mr Murdstone, who then sends him to Salem House, the private school owned by his friend Mr. Creakle. After David's mother dies, Mr Murdstone sends him to work in a factory, where he has to clean wine bottles. He appears at Betsey Trotwood's house after David runs away. Mr Murdstone appears to show signs of repentance when confronted with Copperfield's aunt, but later in the book we hear he has married another young woman and applied his old principles of "firmness."
　　 * Jane Murdstone – Mr. Murdstone's equally cruel sister, who moves into the Copperfield house after Mr. Murdstone marries Clara Copperfield. She is the "Confidential Friend" of David's first wife, Dora Spenlow, and encourages many of the problems that occur between David Copperfield and Dora's father, Mr. Spenlow. Later, she rejoins her brother and his new wife in a relationship very much like the one they had with David's mother.
　　 * Daniel Peggotty – Peggotty's brother; a humble but generous Yarmouth fisherman who takes his nephew Ham and niece Emily into his custody after each of them has been orphaned. After Emily's departure, he travels around the world in search of her. He eventually finds her in London, and after that they emigrate to Australia.
　　 * Emily (Little Em'ly) – A niece of Mr. Peggotty. She is a childhood friend of David Copperfield, who loves her in his childhood days. She leaves her cousin and fiancé, Ham, for Steerforth, but returns after Steerforth deserts her. She emigrates to Australia with Mr. Peggotty after being rescued from a London brothel.
　　 * Ham Peggotty – A good-natured nephew of Mr. Peggotty and the fiancé of Emily before she leaves him for Steerforth. He later loses his life while attempting to rescue a sailor, who happens to be Steerforth, from a shipwreck. His death is hidden from his family due to the fact that David does not want them to worry on the brink of their journey.
　　 * Mrs. Gummidge – The widow of Daniel Peggotty's partner in a boat. She is a self-described "lone, lorn creetur" who spends much of her time pining for "the old 'un" (her late husband). After Emily runs away from home with Steerforth, she changes her attitude to better comfort everyone around her and tries to be very caring and motherly. She too emigrates to Australia with Dan and the rest of the surviving family.
　　 * Martha Endell – A young woman of a bad reputation who helps Daniel Peggotty find his niece after she returns to London. She has worked as a prostitute, and been victim to the idea of suicide.
　　 * Mr. Creakle – The harsh headmaster of young David's boarding school, who is assisted by Tungay. Mr. Creakle is a friend of Mr. Murdstone. He singles out David for extra torment. Later he becomes a Middlesex magistrate, and is considered enlightened for his day.
　　
　　"I am married". Etching by Phiz.
　　
　　 * James Steerforth – A close friend of David, he is of a romantic and charming disposition and has known David ever since his first days at Salem House. Although well-liked by most, he proves himself to be lacking in character by seducing and later abandoning Little Em'ly. He eventually drowns at Yarmouth with Ham Peggotty, who had been trying to rescue him.
　　 * Tommy Traddles – David's friend from Salem House. They meet again later and become eventual lifelong friends. Traddles works hard but faces great obstacles because of his lack of money and connections. He eventually succeeds in making a name and a career for himself.
　　 * Wilkins Micawber – A gentle man who befriends David as a young boy. He suffers from much financial difficulty and even has to spend time in a debtor's prison. Eventually he emigrates to Australia where he enjoys a successful career as a sheep farmer and becomes a magistrate. He is based on Dickens' father, John Dickens.
　　 * Mr. Dick (Richard Babley) – A slightly deranged, rather childish but amiable man who lives with Betsey Trotwood. His madness is amply described in as much as that he claims to have the "trouble" of King Charles I in his head.
　　 * Dr. Strong – The headmaster of David's Canterbury school, whom he visits on various occasions.
　　 * Anne Strong – The young wife of Dr. Strong. Although she remains loyal to him, she fears that he suspects that she is involved in an affair with Jack Maldon.
　　 * Jack Maldon – A cousin and childhood sweetheart of Anne Strong. He continues to bear affection for her and tries to seduce her into leaving Dr. Strong.
　　 * Mr. Wickfield – The father of Agnes Wickfield and lawyer to Betsey Trotwood. He is prone to alcoholism.
　　 * Agnes Wickfield – Mr. Wickfield's mature and lovely daughter and close friend of David since childhood. She later becomes David's second wife and mother of their children.
　　 * Uriah Heep – A wicked young man who serves as partner to Mr. Wickfield. He is finally discovered to have stolen money and is imprisoned as a punishment. He always talks of being "'umble" (humble) and nurtures a deep hatred of David Copperfield and many others.
　　 * Mrs. Steerforth – The wealthy widowed mother of James Steerforth. She herself is incredibly like her son.
　　 * Miss Dartle – A strange, vitriolic woman who lives with Mrs. Steerforth. She has a secret love for Steerforth and blames others such as Emily and even Steerforth's own mother for corrupting him. She is described as being extremely skinny and displays a visible scar on her lip caused by Steerforth. She is also Steerforth's cousin.
　　 * Mr. Spenlow – An employer of David's during his days as a proctor and the father of Dora Spenlow. He dies suddenly of a heart attack while driving his phaeton home.
　　 * Dora Spenlow – The adorable but foolish daughter of Mr. Spenlow who becomes David's first wife. She is described as being impractical and with many similarities to David's mother. She dies of illness on the same day as her dog, Jip.
　　 * Mr.Sharp – He was the chief teacher of Salem House and had more authority than Mr.Mell.He looked weak,both in health and character;his head seemed to be very heavy for him:he walked on one side.He had a big nose.
　　 * Mr.Mell – A tall, thin young man with hollow cheeks.His hair was dusty and dry too,with rather short sleeves and legs.