David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens is an audiobook feed that presents the novel one chapter at a time, with each episode numbered and titled to match the book. The titles alone tell a story. They are written in the narrator's own voice, and together they sketch a childhood in a few plain verbs: 'I Am Born', 'I Observe', 'I Have A Change', 'I Fall Into Disgrace', 'I Am Sent Away From Home'. Chapter 1 sets the terms, with David wondering whether he will turn out to be the hero of his own life and noting that the clock began to strike just as he began to cry. Dickens's comedy is never far away. Betsey Trotwood sits frowning at the fire with her skirt tucked up and seizes on the name of the house, declaring that cookery would have been more to the purpose than a rookery. In the same chapter, elm trees bend toward one another like giants whispering secrets. The chapter closes on the grave of David's father. Peggotty turns up again and again in the early chapters. David remembers her with cheeks so red that the birds might have pecked them instead of apples. He sees her standing stiff as a barrel with a candlestick in her hand, and later bursting out of a hedge to cram cakes into his pockets and a purse into his hand without saying a word. A darker thread runs alongside. A gentleman with ill-omened black eyes offers to be the best of friends and is given the wrong hand on purpose. In the chapter 'I Fall Into Disgrace', Miss Murdstone governs the house so completely that David's mother gives no opinion without first finding out hers, and the Murdstone religion is described as austere and wrathful. There are gentler passages too. The laziest carrier's horse in the world seems to chuckle at the people it keeps waiting, and a night in a boat at Yarmouth gives way to a morning on the beach with little Emily, who admits she is afraid of the sea. On the overnight journey to London, David watches village boys run after the vehicle and wonders whether their fathers are alive. Where he is sent, Mr. Mell hardly speaks to him but is never harsh, and the two keep each other company without talking. The feed reaches much further into the book as well. Chapter 41, 'Dora's Aunts', has an older David exchanging formal letters with two old ladies and arranging to call on them with his friend Mr. Thomas Traddles of the Inner Temple. He is also convinced that Mr. Mills is going to India purely to harass him. That chapter introduces itself as a LibriVox recording in the public domain, and the early chapters close with a spoken end-of-chapter line. The natural place to begin is Chapter 1, 'I Am Born', and the numbering makes it easy to return to exactly where the story was left.