1872. Includes 61 illustrations. Dickens, English novelist, is considered by many to be the greatest of his country. His works were known to indict society's mistreatment and abuse of the poor, especially children. Charles Dickens once referred to his novel David Copperfield as his favorite child. Perhaps more than any other Dickens novel, David Copperfield is a drama of memory and imagination, drawing most closely from Charles Dickens's own life. Its hero, orphaned as a boy, grows up to discover love and happiness, heartbreak and sorrow amid a cast of eccentrics, innocents, and villains. Praising Dickens's power of invention, Somerset Maugham wrote: There were never such people as the Micawbers, Peggotty and Barkis, Traddles, Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick, Uriah Heep and his mother. They are fantastic inventions of Dickens's exultant imagination...you can never quite forget them. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.