Page "David Copperfield" Paragraph 9

Tolstoy regarded Dickens as the best of all English novelists and considered Copperfield his finest work, ranking the " Mischief " chapter ( chapter 42 ) the standard by which the world's great fiction should be judged.

Henry James remembered hiding under a small table as a boy to hear its instalments read aloud by his mother.

Dostoyevsky read it enthralled in a Siberian prison camp.

Franz Kafka called his own first novel Amerika " sheer imitation " of David Copperfield.

James Joyce paid it reverence through parody in Ulysses.

G. K. Chesterton considered Copperfield " the best of all Dickens ' books ".

Virginia Woolf, who otherwise betrayed little regard for Dickens, confessed the durability of this one novel, for it belongs, she said, to " the memories and myths of life ".

In a letter written to Hugh Walpole on 8 February 1936, she notes that " I'm reading David Copperfield for the 6th time with almost complete satisfaction.

I'd forgotten how magnificent it is [...] So enthusiastic am I that I've got a new life of him: which makes me dislike him as a human being ".

The book was also Sigmund Freud's favourite novel.

Somerset Maugham considered it a great novel, although he found David the weakest character in it, unworthy of the real Dickens, praising Mr Mickawber, who " never fails ", and considered that Little Em ' ly got what she was asking for.

Charlotte Bronte referred to the novel in a letter to William Smith Williams on 13 September 1849, noting that " I have read David Copperfield ; it seems to me very good — admirable in some parts.

You said it had affinity to Jane Eyre: it has — now and then — only what an advantage has Dickens in his varied knowledge of men and things !".

John Irving wrote of the book many times in his novel " The Cider House Rules " in which the main character, Homer Wells, reads " David Copperfield " to the other orphans every night before bed.