 

                                Charles Dickens

                            The Personal History of

                               David Copperfield

                                    Preface

I remarked in the original Preface to this Book, that I did not find it easy to
get sufficiently far away from it, 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 was so recent and strong, and my mind was so divided
between pleasure and regret - pleasure in the achievement of a long design,
regret in the separation from many companions - that I was in danger of wearying
the reader with personal confidences and private emotions.
    Besides which, all that I could have said of the Story to any purpose, I had
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
had nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which might be of
less moment still), that no one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading,
more than I believed it in the writing.
    So true are these avowals at the present day, that I can now only take the
reader into one confidence more. Of all my books, I like this the best. It will
be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that
no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond
parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is DAVID
COPPERFIELD.
 

                                   Chapter I

                                   I Am Born.

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. To begin my life with the
beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and
believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock
began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
    In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the
nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively
interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming
personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and
secondly, that I
