David Copperfield (1935 film) David Copperfield (1935 film) David Copperfield is a 1935 American film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer based upon the Charles Dickens novel "The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, & Observation of David Copperfield the Younger". A number of characters and incidents from the novel were omitted – notably David's time at Salem House boarding school, although one character he met at Salem House (Steerforth) was retained for the film as a head boy at the school David attended after his aunt Betsey Trotwood gained custody of him. The story was adapted by Hugh Walpole from the Dickens novel, and the film was directed
Charles Dickens Chesterton stated, "It is not the death of little Nell, but the life of little Nell, that I object to", arguing that the maudlin effect of his description of her life owed much to the gregarious nature of Dickens's grief, his "despotic" use of people's feelings to move them to tears in works like this. The question as to whether Dickens belongs to the tradition of the sentimental novel is debatable. Valerie Purton, in her recent "Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition", sees him continuing aspects of this tradition, and argues that his "sentimental scenes and characters [are] as crucial to