Oh what delight to find so many Dickens fans on the Sphere. He is still my favorite novelist. A week ago someone asked me, if I could get everyone I know to read one novel, what would it be -- and I answered without even thinking, "David Copperfield."
He also created what may be my favorite couple in Enlish literature -
Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness in "The Old Curiosity Shop." I never get tired of rereading their story.
One of CD's great gifts is the way he brings even passing characters to life as individuals - like the butcher in "Martin Chuzzlewit" who objects to Tom Pinch (who is trying to force a beefsteak into his pocket) that "Meat must be humored, not drove." Or the actor's dresser in "Great Expectations" who declares on the authority of much experience that "You're out in your reading of Hamlet when you get your legs in profile."
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