David Copperfield

Abstract

Composition Begun February 1849, finished October 1850. From 23 to 28 February Dickens was trying out titles and names (see below) — for him an indispensable preliminary to the business of writing. Progress at first was slow: with the first number due on 1 May, he confessed on 19 April that ‘My hand is out in the matter of Copperfield. Today and yesterday I have done nothing. Though I know what I want to do, I am lumbering on like a stage-wagon …. I am quite aground … and the long Copperfieldian perspective looks snowy and thick, this fine morning.’ Soon, however, his writing gathered momentum: halfway through the third number, he told Forster (6 June) that he felt ‘quite confident in the story’; and by 17 November he was able to tell him, ‘I am wonderfully in harness, and nothing galls or frets.’ Some of the later portions were written very rapidly — Chs 23–4, for instance, within four days. Manuscript and corrected proofs in Forster Collection.