Join our host David Hartman and fellow Columbia alumni as the book club discusses David Copperfield by Charles Dickens; a selection from our book club member Chris Stacey.

David Copperfield was the first book Sigmund Freud gave his fiancée, Martha Bernays, on their engagement in 1882. This was a book encrypted with peculiar meaning to a man with a special fascination for the complicated relation of autobiography to storytelling. There are the characteristic prose arpeggios, the virtuoso similes and metaphors, and the parade of timeless characters: Mr Micawber, Mrs Gummidge, Betsey Trotwood, Barkis, Uriah Heep, Steerforth, Mr Spenlow (of Spenlow and Jorkins) and Miss Mowcher. The key transitional text to Dickens becoming the supreme Victorian entertainer and moralist, the author of those mature, and darker, masterpieces, Bleak House, Hard Times and Great Expectations. – Robert McCrum

Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Time: 6:30 p.m. Central | 7:30PM Eastern | 4:30PM Pacific

Location: Zoom Video Conference

Cost: Free