![]() ![]() However, the wealth generated by industrialization also contributed to the rise of a professional middle class distinct from both the aristocracy and the working poor. In David Copperfield, the overcrowding, pollution, and disease associated with nineteenth-century city life figure prominently in the chapters surrounding Martha Endell. Meanwhile, the ongoing trend of urbanization contributed to a decline in living standards for the poor. ![]() For example, an 1833 act limited children ages eleven to eighteen to twelve-hour work days, and the act only applied to textile workers. Child labor, for instance, was commonplace, and attempts at reform often did little to address the problem. Although the Industrial Revolution had made a handful of entrepreneurs wealthier than ever, England's new factories relied on labor from a vast number of poor workers with minimal legal protections. Dickens died of a stroke in 1870, having written a total of fifteen novels along with numerous short stories, essays, and articles.Īlthough a rigid class system had long been a feature of British society, Dickens wrote David Copperfield at a time when social stratification was worsening and becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. David Copperfield's romantic frustrations also owe something to Dickens's life: Dickens' marriage to Catherine Hogarth, though happy at first, had become so strained by 1858 that the couple separated (Dickens himself was likely having an affair with the actress Ellen Ternan at the time). Although Dickens was ultimately able to return to school, he found the experience of working at the factory incredibly traumatic and frequently drew on it when he began to make a living as a writer-first as a journalist and then, after the 1836 publication of The Pickwick Papers, as a novelist. When John Dickens was eventually imprisoned for his debts, his twelve-year-old son was pulled out of school and sent to work in a blacking (boot polish) factory to financially support his family. His father John worked as a clerk in a naval office but habitually owed money (and in fact served as the inspiration for David Copperfield's Mr. ![]() Like David, Dickens was born to middle-class but relatively poor parents. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr Murdstone his brilliant but unworthy school-friend Steerforth 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.Dickens drew heavily on his own life story while writing David Copperfield, and the parallels extend all the way back to Dickens's birth. It is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a novelist. Now a major film directed by Armando Iannucci, starring Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Peter Capaldi and Ben Whishaw'The greatest achievement of the greatest of all novelists' Leo TolstoyIn David Copperfield - the novel he described as his 'favourite child' - Dickens drew on his own experiences to create one of his most moving and enduringly popular works, filled with tragedy and comedy in equal measure.
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