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David and his mother in the cottage
Harold Copping
1893
Photographic reproduction of line drawing
11.3 x 10 cm (4 ¼ by 4 inches), vignetted
An illustration for "Little David Copperfield," p. 55.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Little David Copperfield lived with his mother in a pretty house in the village of Blunderstone in Suffolk. His father died before David could remember anything and he had neither brothers nor sisters. He was fondly loved by his pretty young mother, and their kind, good servant Peggotty, and David was a very happy little fellow. They had very few friends, and the only relation Mrs. Copperfield talked about was an aunt of David's father, a tall and rather terrible old lady, from all accounts. [Children's Stories from Dickens, "Little David Copperfield," 54]
Dickens's favourite child, which is to say "The favourite Child of his Imagination," was David Copperfield, a classic Bildungsroman which is also the portrait of the novelist as a child, adolescent, and young man. The child in story is also the narrative voice, controlling readers' impressions of all the characters from the kindly nurse, Clara Peggotty to the villainous Uriah Heep and the brutal Mr. Murdstone. In the version that Mary Angela Dickens presents in Children's Stories from Dickens, the narrative is a more conventional third-person, limited omniscient, one, that takes us from Blunderstone to Aunt Betsey's cottage near Dover. "When you are older you can read how he grew up to be a good, clever man, and met again all his old friends, and made many new ones" (70), concludes Dickens's granddaughter. At sixteen pages, this is the second-longest chapter in the book. As opposed to this idyllic headpiece of the little boy receiving all his beautiful mother's attention, in the next, Mr. Murdstone canes David, the child falls victim to the brutality of a cruel stepfather.
Left: David appears in various group settings in Phiz's original serial program prior to the study of David, his young mother, and her newborn in Ch. VIII, Changes at Home (July 1849). Centre: Harry Furniss's psychological study in the frontispiece of the Charles Dickens Library Edition of the adult David-as-author dreaming his characters into existence: Frontispiece (1910). Right: Kyd's Player's Cigarette Card No. 39 depicting David as a waif on the highroad, running away from London: David Copperfield (1910).
Left: Fred Barnard's Household Edition headpiece of David's idyllic early years with his mother: David's Bargain (1872). Right: The first appearance of the protagonist in Sol Eytinge Junior's Diamond Edition sequence: David's Bargain (1867).
Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne ("Phiz"). London: Chapman & Hall, May 1849 to April 1850.
Dickens, Mary Angela [Charles Dickens' grand-daughter]. Dickens' Dream Children. London, Paris New, York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., 1924.
Dickens, Mary Angela et al. Children's Stories from Dickens. Introduction by Percy Fitzgerald. Illustrated by Harold Copping. London, Paris New, York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, Ltd., 1893.
Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold Copping. Character Sketches from Dickens. London: Raphael Tuck, 1924. Copy in the Paterson Library, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
Created 26 September 2023