‘A Last Retrospect’

Abstract

I have named this chapter ‘A Last Retrospect’ as a tribute to my grandfather’s fondness for Charles Dickens, and as a result of my rereading David Copperfield in search of the unfortunate Mr Mell. In his introduction to the second edition of David Copperfield, Dickens wrote:

I remarked in the original Preface to this Book, that I did not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from it, in the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the composure which this formal heading would seem to require. My interest in it was so recent and strong, and my mind was so divided between pleasure and regret — pleasure in the achievement of a long design, regret in the separation from many companions — that I was in danger of wearying the reader with personal confidences and private emotions.