David Copperfield Dickensalong

[Piggywaspushed]

Hello All

Inspired by the Bleak House readalong, I have decided this might be the year to tackle David Copperfield.

Those of us who did BH read it obediently in Dickens' instalments ,which wasn't to everyone's taste! We had a chat at the end of each month. It took 18 months and I think we had three stalwarts left at the end.

DC was published as follows (note different months!):

• I – May 1849 (chapters 1–3);
• II – June 1849 (chapters 4–6);
• III – July 1849 (chapters 7–9);
• IV – August 1849 (chapters 10–12);
• V – September 1849 (chapters 13–15);
• VI – October 1849 (chapters 16–18);
• VII – November 1849 (chapters 19–21);
• VIII – December 1849 (chapters 22–24);
• IX – January 1850 (chapters 25–27);
• X – February 1850 (chapters 28–31);
• XI – March 1850 (chapters 32–34);
• XII – April 1850 (chapters 35–37);
• XIII – May 1850 (chapters 38–40);
• XIV – June 1850 (chapters 41–43);
• XV – July 1850 (chapters 44–46);
• XVI – August 1850 (chapters 47–50);
• XVII – September 1850 (chapters 51–53);
• XVIII – October 1850 (chapters 54–57);
• XIX-XX – November 1850 (chapters 58–64).

I am happy to negotiate reading faster so that we tackle three instalments at a time? Thus , the first would be Chapter 1 -9 and we would be finished in the summer.

What does everyone think?

Absolutely fine by me, Piggy.

I'm a knitter too, Fortuna, I hear you . He obviously liked the image, though - I instantly thought of Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities, knitting furiously away by the guillotine.

There's an online knitting/crafts site called Ravelry which some will know - I've seen a book of patterns on there called 'What Would Madame Defarge Knit?'

Fine by me too

I missed the knitting... who was knitting??

Mrs Heep when she was standing sentinel over DC and Agnes to make sure they didn't get up to any funny business, Piggy

Naturally!!

No objection to two more months.

She never left off, or left us for a moment. I had arrived early in the day, and we had still three or four hours before dinner; but she sat there, playing her knitting-needles as monotonously as an hourglass might have poured out its sands. [...] I was conscious presently of the evil eye passing me, and going on to her, and coming back to me again, and dropping furtively upon the knitting. What the knitting was, I don’t know, not being learned in that art; but it looked like a net; and as she worked away with those Chinese chopsticks of knitting-needles, she showed in the firelight like an ill-looking enchantress, baulked as yet by the radiant goodness opposite, but getting ready for a cast of her net by-and-by. [...] In the drawing-room, there was the mother knitting and watching again. [...] I would rather have remained down-stairs, knitting and all, than gone to bed. I hardly got any sleep. Next day the knitting and watching began again, and lasted all day.

Sounds like a good use of two days to me. One of the reasons I have embraced audiobooks so much is that it allows me to knit at the same time. Nothing like a good book and a good stretch of stocking stitch in the round. There is a surprising amount of knitting mentioned in the book, with 4 women at it at some point or other.

Terpsichore I don't know if you have ever seen the Defarge book itself, every project is inspired by classic literature and the patterns are interspersed with essays about the book/character that inspired them.

Happy with the choice to split the rest, just let me know where I should be reading up to please.

I'm going to check that out properly now, Fortuna, thank you. I only got as far as looking at the thumbnails of the patterns.

(Apologies for a brief derail into knitting chat, but Great Expectations was on TV the other day - the David Lean version. Estella was knitting in one scene and Valerie Hobson looked as though she knew what she was doing, although the piece of 'knitting' looked more like netting. Then the long-shot changed to a close-up and she was clearly holding a piece of knitting at a much later stage of construction, with many more rows completed in a different pattern. Then they went back to the long-shot and the earlier version reappeared.

I had to laugh at how indignant I felt at this bad knitting continuity! 🧶)

There are two books Terpsichore the sequel is What Else Would Madame Defarge Knit? which had better patterns in my opinion. The editor of the book used to do a podcast called CraftLit that did readalongs to classics. I don't know if it's still going.

The worst screen knitting offence I have seen is two knitting needles stabbed through a finished piece of crochet that the actress was vigorously wafting in her lap. I was quite incensed.

OK, so let's read ( and knit, if you will) to the end of Chapter 57 .

Talking of continuity there was a woeful example of a disappearing omelette on Killing Eve yesterday.

Well, I whizzed through the final chapters this afternoon and have just caught up on your chat. I too thought that Dora resembles DC's Mum in many ways.
Hooray for David punching the evil Uriah. (I almost cheered!)
Happy to keep the reading pace and finish in July.
Onward to Chapter 57... obviously dying to know what beans Martha might be ready to spill!

Oh, well done for catching up !! Gold star to you!

Did anyone else really notice the contrast between the comic bits and the very Victorian, rather preachy passages - especially the Annie Strong part, where she gives forth this great high-flown plea for forgiveness? I felt a certain tension there, and I wasn't sure that it always worked that well. Almost as though Dickens felt he had to include some storylines that ticked those moralistic boxes, but was more comfortable (and certainly more original) with the lighter comic material.

But I suppose this was early in his writing career and he was still working out how to do all this...

Yes, there was a sea change and I found Annie a bit unconvincing but I suppose it's like when EastEnders or Doctors decides to do a 'morality plot'...

I prefer it to Austen, though, where everyone always appears so vacuous!

I haven’t enjoyed these chapters as much as some previous ones, except the one discussing David and Dora’s housekeeping, which was hilarious! She really is a child isn’t she - drawing on his face and then being given a set of keys just to keep her amused. It’s obviously being set up for marital strife ahead.....

Piggy there was another amusing reference to Traddles’ hair - can’t recall the exact quotation but it was something about every individual strand standing on its tiptoes!

I also clocked the knitting and immediately thought of A Tale Of Two Cities. I will have to keep an eye out for more knitting references in other books to see if it is a recurring theme of his.

Other amusing things I noticed:

• the new tenant at the aunt’s old cottage inheriting her feud and waging ‘incessant war against donkeys’!
• Mrs Markleham saying that there isn’t a room in the house ‘in which a paper can be what I call, read’ which reminded me of the mum from the sitcom Miranda!

I’m intrigued to see what Martha has to say and hope Little Em’ly turns up soon.

I liked the bit about the memento of Traddles hair inside a book (aah) which then had to be weighted down... (oh!)

1 chapter behind here, I'll finish tomorrow and catch up. I've found this month a bit of a slog but I think that's more about my state of lockdown mind than the actual book

I loved Traddles' lock of hair escaping from the place it was being stored! My son has hair like that :) Nice to meet Sophy and find out that she is lovely.

Dickens is really exploring lots of issues about married relationships isn't he? Dora's refusal to consider the cookbook or the issues of household economics also tie in with the Micawbers and the autobiographical elements - easy to see how a household run by Dora could fall into debt rather quickly.

Uriah is getting better and better, I never understood why he was such a famous Dickens character but he's wonderfully awful and so vividly described.

Emily's letter though.... I may have missed something important. Are we to believe that she is incredibly unhappy with Steerforth or just feeling incredibly guilty about her treatment of Ham and her uncle? The tone of the letter sounded most odd to modern ears - surely she chose to elope with Steerforth (she did, right? I didn't miss anything there) so I can't work out whether she is unhappy-because-ruined-although-still-enjoying-all-the-illicit-sex-etc or if it's all gone horribly wrong.

Fortuna, have you read Shamela? It's a piss-take of Pamela written by Fielding and quite good fun if you are finding the original a bit overwraught.

(From memory I would say it is quite a bit shorter too, although it's cough almost 30 years since I read it)

Keith I shall look that up forthwith! It took me days to be able to face reviewing it. I feel I deserve a laugh after all that.

I keep debating with myself about the value of reading in installments vs in-a-oner, but some of the classics are so long it can be hard to keep going. I also found Villette quite fatiguing despite enjoying it. I'm finding DC quite unbalanced for action and wonder if I would have abandoned it due to earlier parts dragging on if I hadn't been in this group. I feel like I haven't had much to contribute but the the discussions have been invaluable to my understanding with things I either hadn't noticed or didn't the know the back story to. Although at times I wish I had just got on with it as I forget what's happening from month to month.

I’m equally on the fence about instalments v all in one Fortuna. I’ve tended to read all my chapters in a rush at the end of the month, so when I first come back to it I struggle to remember what’s happened before. However like you I think it would be hard going to read it all in one go. I do have the complete set of Dickens staring at me from the shelf so I do need to get on with some of his other long books. I might just have to break them up by reading something else alongside and alternating chapters to avoid boredom!!

I honestly think I would NEVER have read this wonderful book without instalments. That said, I did do A Suitable Boy in one sitting. War and Peace gets a volume read every so often and Mantel gets a section per month.

You're all so disciplined! This is the first time I've read in instalments like this and I've really enjoyed the experience. The pace has worked well for me and I've tried to read a chapter every 3 days or so to keep on it and not forget what's going on. That didn't work very well this month though as life got in the way and I ended up having to read 6 chapters on the 1st!!

Thought I should share my picture of my cat who appears to be enjoying the book ...