No new reading material in several weeks so I have turned to what I have. The Lion and the Fox, The Rise and Fall, the KJV bible and finally Dickens, yet again, A Tale of Two Cities, started but not finished and, in the last two or three days, David Copperfield. Again.

David Copperfield. It is Dicken' best work, I am sure of it. It was his own favorite. All of his superb




writing is there and at its peak. His literary techniques, sharp and brilliant both, the humor unexcelled. It is a complex work, the characters, drawn better than in other of his oeuvre, enter, retire, reenter as if he is Bach composing a fugue. Dickens weakness, his character development of women, is also present but Betsey Trotwood in particular and Mrs. Pegotty, are fully drawn. His characters. My, how many unforgettable ones here. Miss Trotwood, Pegotty, Mr. Micawber, even Mr. Dick and biased though I am by proximity, I can think at present of no more better drawn character in all of Dickens than Uriah Heep. Dickens was a genius and in David Copperfield his genius was most acute.

"Janet! Donkies!" At the end of his rope, David walks all the way to escape the Murdstones, to find his long lost Aunt.

Miss Trotwood, with David cowering behind her and Mr. Dick standing, gives Edward and Jane Murdstone a going over, dismisses them and takes David as her (and Mr. Dick's) charge.

David agrees to supper with Uriah and Mrs. Heep, who double-team David and get him to say too much when Mr. Micawber pays an unexpected and inopportune visit.

Uriah maneuvering, buttonholing Copperfield in the corner, pressing down his thumb and...and about to destroy Mr. Wickfield, foreground, and force his daughter, Agnes, to marry him.


The incomparable David Copperfield. Dickens at his height.