David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

About an hour ago I finished this classic Dickens novel. I have now worked my way through three of the Dickens classics and I can honestly say that these books are timeless.

There is a reason that outside of Shakespeare the works of Charles Dickens are redone, reinvented, and reinterpreted, more than any other author. They hold up.

This book was just a side read for me over the last couple of months so I took the opportunity to savor it, sips at a time as it were.

Just this morning when the narrator Copperfield talks about what a fine jail has been built in London in his absence and comments of the protests that would come about had the money for that fortification been diverted for a fine school and you can see that, sadly, the more things change the more they stay the same.

The characters in this book, from Mr. Micawber, Agnes, Peggotty, Ham, Traddles to the wicked Uriah Heep make this book soar. Some say this is Dicken's most autobiographical novel, if so he certainly new some interesting and unique people.

Being provincial Americans we often point to Mark Twain as the great writer of the nineteenth century. Twain was talented, but for me though it is no contest. Dickens was and remains the true giant.

I must say I am sorry to Mrs. Bagley. My Junior High English teacher exhorted us to read these books, and in high school Mr. Peaco said the same. I,like many of you with your teachers, ignored their directives. They now rest in peace but I hope they hear me tell them they were correct, we all should read these books.

Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and now David Copperfield. Dickens was a genius.