David Copperfield

David Copperfield / by Charles Dickens; read by Frederick Davidson.— Ashland : Blackstone Audiobooks, 2004.

Downloadable audio file (36 hrs., 17 min.)

ISBN: 0786131063

Title from: Title details screen.

Requires OverDrive Media Console (file size: 521563 KB).

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

1. Autobiographical fiction. 2. Bildungsromans. 3. England – Fiction. 4. Young men – Fiction.

In this semi-autobiographical novel, a successful writer reminisces about his early life and education. What starts as episodic memories soon becomes a vast witty narrative delight of over eight hundred pages with multiple intertwining plots and over thirty distinctly memorable characters from every level of nineteenth century English society. The false humility of the repulsive Uriah Heep and the grandiloquent optimism of the ever impoverished Wilkins Micawber, a character Dickens based on his own father, have become characters that have grown to be cultural touchstones beyond the novel.

Frederick Davidson narration is somewhat dry and detached, but his voicing of characters is brilliant. The whining unctuousness he brings to the voice of Uriah Heep made my skin crawl. His curt way of giving voice to Betsy Trotwood produced an instant mental picture of David’s eccentric and opinionated aunt. The gruff magnanimity of Daniel Peggotty and the self-righteous cruelty of Edward Murdstone and his sister are wonderfully voiced.