'Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show'. Born to a mother already six months widowed, the young David Copperfield suffers at the hands of a tyrannical stepfather and at the hard graft of the factory floor. But his boyhood wanderings take him from Suffolk and London to Dover and beyond - and through the lives of a host of colourful characters - on his path to adulthood, and the discovery of his own vocation. Dickens' great Bildungsroman (based, in part, on his own life story, and which he held in his 'heart of hearts' as a 'favourite child'), David Copperfield is an epic, exuberant novel, filled with life, both tragic and comic.