Of all Dicken'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, pell-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.