David Copperfield

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Cast out by his cruel stepfather to the brutal boarding school Salem House, young David Copperfield quickly learns that he must fight for a better life. After discovering his mother has died while he has been away, David is left all alone in the world and is sent to work in his stepfather’s factory. He decides his only option is to run away. He escapes London and finds his way to Dover. Once there he hopes to be taken in by his only known relative, his eccentric Aunt Betsy Trotwood. But will he ever be able to find the love and security he needs?

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Charles Dickens was born in Landport in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812. Sent to work in a blacking factory at the age of twelve, after his Navy Pay Office clerk father was imprisoned for debt, Dickens’s memories of this unhappy period haunted him throughout his life and influenced much of his writing. After stints as a clerk and a shorthand reporter in the law courts, Dickens became a reporter of parliamentary debates for the Morning Chronicle until the huge success of his first books enabled him to become a full-time author. Charles Dickens died on 9 June 1870, leaving his last novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished. Peter Ackroyd’s biography of Charles Dickens was published in 1990 to enormous critical acclaim. He has also written another major biography, T.S. Eliot, which was awarded the 1984 Whitbread Prize and was joint winner of the Royal Society of Literature’s William Heinemann Award. Peter Ackroyd’s novels include The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde, Milton in America, Chatterton, The Clerkenwell Tales and The Fall of Troy and his non-fiction works include Ezra Pound and his World, Chaucer and London: The Biography, among others. His most recent biography is Poe: A Life Cut Short.