Of all Dickens's novels, DAVID COPPERFIELD most fervently embraces the comic delights, the tender warmth, the tragic horrors of childhood. It is our classic tale of growing up, an enchanting story of a gentle orphan discovering life and love in an indifferent adult world Persecuted by his wrathful stepfather, Mr.Murdstone; deceived by his boyhood idol. the callous,charming Steerforth; driven into moral combat with the sniveling clerk Uriah Heep; and hurled, ~ell-mell, into a blizzard of infatuation with the adorably dim-witted Dora. he survives the worst and the best with inimitable style, his bafflement turning to selfawareness and his unbridled young heart growing ever more disciplined and true.

I DO not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from this Book,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, is so recent and strong, and my mind is so divided between pleasure and regret--pleasure in the achievement of a long design, regret in the separation from many companions--that i am in danger of wearying the reader whom ! love, with personal confidences, and private emotions.

Besides which, all that ! could say of the Story, to any purpose, ! have endeavoured to say in it.

It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years"imaginative task, or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him for ever. Yet, I have nothing else to tell; unless, indeed. ! were to confess (which might be of less moment still) that no one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the writing.

I Am Born

I Observe

I Have a Change

I Fall into Disgrace

I Am Sent Away, from Home

I Enlarge My Circle of Acquaintance

My "First Half" at Salem House

My Holidays. Especially One Happy

  Afternoon

I Have a Memorable Birthday

I Become Neglected, and Am Provided For

I Begin Life on My Own Account, and

  Don"t Like It

Liking Life on My Own Account No Better,

  | Form a Great Resolution

The Sequel of My Resolution

My Aunt Makes Up Her Mind about Me

1 Make Another Beginning

I Am a New Boy in More Senses Than One

Somebody Turns Up

A Retrospect

I Look about Me, and Make a Discovery

Steerforth"s Home

Little Em"ly

Some Old Scenes. and Some New People

I Corroborate Mr. Dick. and Choose a

  Profession

My First Dissipation

Good and Bad Angels

1 Fall into Captivity

Tommy Traddles

Mr. Micawber"s Gauntlet

I Visit Steerforth at His Home. Again

A Loss

A Greater Loss

The Beginning of a Long Journey

Blissful

My Aunt Astonishes Me

Depression

Enthusiasm

A Little Cold Water

A Dissolution of Partnership

Wickfield and Heep

The Wanderer

Dora"s Aunts

Mischief

Another Retrospect

Our Housekeeping

Mr. Dick Fulfils My Aunt"s Predictions

Intelligence

Martha

Domestic

1 Am Involved in Mystery

Mr. Peggotty"s Dream Comes True

The Beginning of a Longer Journey

I Assist at an Explosion

Another Retrospect

Mr. Micawber"s Transactions

Tempest

The New Wound, and the Old

The Emigrants

Absence

Return

Agnes

I Am Shown Two lnteresting Penitents

A Light Shines on My Way

A Visitor

A Last Retrospect