This is the novel Dickens regarded as his ´favourite child´ and is considered his most autobiographical. As David recounts his experiences from childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist, Dickens draws openly and revealingly on his own life. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters are Rosa Dartle, Dora, Steerforth, and the ´umble Uriah Heep, along with Mr Micawber, a portrait of Dickens´s own father which evokes a mixture of love, nostalgia and guilt. Dickens´s great Bildungsroman (based, in part, on his own boyhood) is a work filled with life, both comic and tragic...