Book Description
Robert Graves contends that half the words in Charles Dickens' classic add nothing to the story. The original was written in serial form over 20 months while Dickens formed the habit of turning out an installment a month, seldom looking more than a couple of months ahead for plot development. While ensuring regular payment, this strongly prejudiced the eventual unity of the whole. To reduce the length of the book without sacrificing continuity Graves felt he must re-write the whole. What he attempts is the restoration of the novel to what he feels is its natural length and plot. There has been no modernization, merely a tightening-up, a picking-up of the dropped threads of magazine laxity--with countless small changes and additions--the goal being to make DAVID COPPERFIELD accessible to the modern reader.

From the Publisher
13 1.5-hour cassettes

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Robert Graves contends that half the words in Charles Dickens' classic add nothing to the story. The original was written in serial form over 20 months while Dickens formed the habit of turning out an installment a month, seldom looking more than a couple of months ahead for plot development. While ensuring regular payment, this strongly prejudiced the eventual unity of the whole.

To reduce the length of the book without sacrificing continuity Graves felt he must re-write the whole. What he attempts is the restoration of the novel to what he feels is its natural length and plot.