Character guide

David Copperfield

major

Also known as David, Master Davy, Davy, Master Copperfield, Copperfield, young Copperfield, Mr. Copperfield, Mr. David Copperfield, Master David, Trot, Doady, Daisy, Mas'r Davy, Mas'r Davy bor, Mas'r Davy bor '

David begins as a child shuffled between a grieving nurse, a stepfather's cruelty, and a London warehouse, then claws his way toward respectability through school, friendship, and self-invention. His defining tension is between the heart's impulsive choices and the judgment he slowly earns, especially as he mistakes infatuation for love. Because he narrates everything, his early and middle years set the moral ledger against which every other character is measured.

Clara Peggotty

major

Also known as Peggotty, old Peggotty, Mr. Peggotty, Both Peggotty, whisper Mr. Peggotty, Clara Peggotty Barkis, Clara

Peggotty is the servant who becomes David's first true family, smuggling him food, keeping his mother's memory alive, and later marrying the stubborn carrier Barkis. Her quiet ferocity surfaces when she confronts Mr. Murdstone, accusing him of worrying a sweet creature to an early grave. She anchors the novel's early emotional world, proving that constancy can be a form of courage.

Wilkins Micawber

major

Also known as Mr. Micawber, Master Micawber, Micawber, Consequently Mr. Micawber, I. Mr. Micawber, the immovable Mr. Micawber, LIV Mr. Micawber, Both Mr. Micawber, Wilkins, Wilkins Micawber , Esquire

Micawber lodges David during his bleak warehouse years, lecturing on income and expenditure while dodging creditors and landing in the King's Bench prison. His buoyant optimism and theatrical diction mask real financial chaos, and his wife's vow never to desert him only deepens the comedy. He matters because he teaches David resilience and, later, becomes an unlikely instrument of justice.

Agnes Wickfield

major

Also known as Agnes, Miss Agnes, Dear Agnes, Dearest Agnes, little Agnes, Little Agnes

Agnes keeps her father's household and his fragile peace, quietly enduring the schemes of Uriah Heep while offering David counsel he too often ignores. Her tension lies between selfless devotion and the pain of watching David chase unsuitable loves. She embodies the novel's ideal of patient integrity, shaping David's conscience long before he recognizes what she means to him.

Dora Spenlow

major

Also known as Dora, little Dora, poor little Dora, Poor little Dora, tender little Dora, Poor Dora, XLI Dora, Little Blossom, Blossom

Dora is the sheltered daughter of David's employer, all curls, lapdogs, and coquettish teasing, who wins David's heart before he understands what marriage requires. Her childlike helplessness clashes painfully with housekeeping, accounts, and the seriousness David craves. She represents the romance of first love and the lesson that affection alone cannot manage a household.

Uriah Heep

major

Also known as Uriah, Heep, overlooking Uriah Heep, Ury

Uriah works his way into the Wickfield household through professions of umbleness, exploiting the lawyer's weakness and guilt to gain power over his affairs. His clammy deference is a weapon, and his resentment of David's advantages simmers beneath every bow. He is the novel's great study in hypocrisy, threatening both Agnes's peace and David's future.

James Steerforth

major

Also known as Steerforth, Mr. Steerforth, Here Steerforth, J. Steerforth, James, Of Steerforth, O Steerforth

Steerforth is the brilliant, self-possessed gentleman-scholar whom young David worships at Salem House and later introduces to the Peggotty household at Yarmouth. His easy contempt for 'that sort of people' — spoken as wit, meant as truth — reveals the flaw beneath the polish, while the scar he once threw into Rosa Dartle's lip hints at a cruelty he never bothers to deny. His pull on David's loyalty and his casual reach into the lives of humbler characters set the moral weather for the novel's middle stretch.

Betsey Trotwood

major

Also known as Miss Trotwood, Miss Betsey, Trotwood, Betsey Trotwood, Miss Betsey Trotwood, Betsey, Dear Miss Trotwood, dear Trotwood, Betsey Trotwood Copperfield, this Betsey Trotwood, Trotwood Copperfield

Having stormed out of the family when David was born the wrong sex, Miss Trotwood reappears as his unlikely guardian — imperious, superstitious about donkeys, and secretly tender. She wages open war on the Murdstones and stakes her pride and purse on David's future, even when her own fortunes wobble. Her contradictions — tyrannical manner, generous heart — make her the book's great argument that kindness need not be soft.

Tommy Traddles

supporting

Also known as Tom, Traddles, Mr. Traddles, Tommy, Mr. Thomas Traddles, the before - mentioned Mr. Thomas Traddles, Mr. Thomas, old Traddles, Dear Mr. Traddles, Poor Traddles

Traddles endures Creakle's cane with the same good humor he later brings to cramped lodgings and postponed marriage, sustained by his devoted Sophy and an unshakable patience. He is the novel's quiet counterweight to Steerforth: no brilliance, no glamour, just decency that compounds. His rise from schoolboy to struggling law clerk gives David a friend whose fortunes mirror the rewards of plain perseverance.

Ham Peggotty

supporting

Also known as Ham, Poor Ham, Ham Peggotty

Ham is the adopted son in the Peggotty household, a rough-handed sailor whose devotion to his uncle and to Little Em'ly runs deep and unspoken. His love for Em'ly — patient, unassuming, and destined for grief — gives the Yarmouth strand its emotional weight. He stands for the honest laboring decency that Steerforth's careless disdain cannot see, and his fate is bound up with the family's.

Little Em'ly

supporting

Also known as Em'ly, little Em'ly, pretty little Em'ly, merry little Em'ly, Little, Emily, little Emily, Little Emily, pretty little Emily, Poor Emily

Raised in the upturned boat-house at Yarmouth, Em'ly is the household's darling — pretty, warm-hearted, and quietly dissatisfied with the narrow horizon of a fisherman's life. Her yearning to be 'a lady' and her bond with the devoted Ham set up the central tension of the Yarmouth story. She matters because her choices test the limits of the Peggottys' love and expose the cost of Steerforth's charm.

Mr. Peggotty

supporting

Also known as Dan'l Peggotty, Dan'l, Daniel, Dan, Uncle Dan

Dan'l Peggotty is the boat-house patriarch, a rough, kind man who adopts his nephew Ham and niece Em'ly and shelters the wandering Mrs. Gummidge without a word of complaint. When Em'ly vanishes, his faith that he will find her becomes the novel's most moving act of patience — he walks, sails, and saves for years, never doubting. His steadfastness gives the story its moral center and its most affecting portrait of fatherhood.

Mr. Murdstone

supporting

Also known as Murdstone, Master Murdstone, the Mr. Murdstone, Mr. ¬ÝMurdstone

Mr. Murdstone enters David's life as his mother's second husband and swiftly converts a warm household into one ruled by grim discipline and silent fear. His firmness is really cruelty: he breaks his wife's spirit and treats his stepson as a problem to be managed. He matters because he is the first great injustice David must survive, setting the orphan's long search for home and kindness in motion.

Miss Murdstone

supporting

Also known as Jane Murdstone, Jane

Jane Murdstone installs herself as housekeeper and jailer of the Copperfield home, managing the keys and watching everyone with joyless vigilance. She prides herself on conscientious duty while delighting in exposure and humiliation, as when she seizes Dora's letters and testifies against her with righteous relish. Her meddling tightens the trap around David's boyhood and later threatens his courtship, making her a persistent, petty engine of the novel's cruelties.

Mr. Dick

supporting

Also known as Dick, poor harmless Mr. Dick, poor Mr. Dick, XLV Mr. Dick, poor Dick

Mr. Dick lives under Betsey Trotwood's protection, kindly, harmless, and obsessed with a manuscript that keeps collapsing into the fate of King Charles the First. His confusion is real, but his loyalty and shrewd affection are not, and David comes to love him as a barometer of his aunt's hidden tenderness. He matters because his quiet observations — of a mysterious man, of Betsey's secret griefs — hint that the household's eccentric surface conceals older wounds and loyalties.

Mr. Wickfield

supporting

Also known as Wickfield

Mr. Wickfield is a respected solicitor whose devotion to his daughter Agnes borders on possessive, and whose sorrow over his dead wife has soured into something he numbs with wine. That weakness gives the scheming Uriah Heep his opening, and the household's slow corrosion becomes one of the novel's quietest horrors. He matters because his decline tests Agnes's strength and gives David a front-row view of how a good man's flaw can be farmed by a patient predator.

Mr. Barkis

supporting

Also known as Barkis, poor Barkis, the late Mr. Barkis

Mr. Barkis drives the coach between Yarmouth and London, a slow, weather-beaten man who says almost nothing and means a great deal. He enlists young David as his messenger to Peggotty — 'Barkis is willin'' — and eventually marries her, revealing a hoarding, suspicious tenderness beneath the grunts. He matters as one of the novel's early lessons in misread surfaces: the gruff carrier turns out to be generous, and his death leaves Peggotty both provided for and bereaved.

Mrs. Micawber

supporting

Also known as Poor Mrs. Micawber, the Micawber, poor Mrs. Micawber

Mrs. Micawber presides over a household perpetually on the brink of ruin, greeting each new creditor and each new scheme with the same resolute cheerfulness. Her devotion to her improvident husband is absolute and slightly absurd, yet it is also genuinely heroic, and she will not hear a word against him. She matters because the Micawbers embody the novel's comic endurance of poverty, and her steadfastness becomes crucial when the family's fortunes finally turn.

Mr. Spenlow

supporting

Also known as Spenlow, the late Mr. Spenlow

Mr. Spenlow is a well-to-do proctor of the Commons who takes David on as a clerk and invites him home to a house where hats, whips, and walking-sticks crowd the hall and a lovely garden lies beyond. He is genial, conventional, and quietly proud of his position, and he assumes David's admiration for Dora is harmless because the young man's prospects are plainly beneath her. His approval, or refusal of it, becomes the quiet gate David must somehow pass through.

Rosa Dartle

supporting

Also known as Miss Dartle, Rosa, Miss Rosa Dartle, Rosa Dartle

Rosa Dartle lives on Mrs. Steerforth's charity as a poor relation and companion, always at the elbow of the proud woman who raised James Steerforth into what he is. She asks pointed, probing questions of everyone around her, yet her bitterness has a source she never fully shows, and her devotion to Steerforth is tangled with something closer to grief than love. She is the household's most uncomfortable conscience, and the reader learns early to listen when she speaks.

Mrs. Steerforth

supporting

Also known as Dear Mrs. Steerforth

Mrs. Steerforth is a commanding presence at her seaside home, doting on James with a devotion that brooks no criticism and treating his friends, including David, with gracious condescension. Her pride in her son is the organizing principle of her life, and she cannot imagine a version of him that would disappoint her. That blindness is the quiet engine of the Steerforth tragedy, and it makes her a figure to watch whenever James is on the page.

Doctor Strong

supporting

Also known as the Doctor, The doctor, The Doctor, Doctor, Strong

Doctor Strong runs the Canterbury school where David is sent after leaving Salem House, and he is famous for his learning, his mildness, and his unfinished dictionary. He has married a woman many years his junior, Annie, and his trust in her is so complete that he refuses to see the gossip gathering around them. His goodness is not weakness, but it makes him vulnerable, and the question of whether that trust will be rewarded runs quietly through the middle of the book.

Mrs. Strong

supporting

Also known as Mrs. Doctor Strong, Annie, Poor Annie

Annie Strong married the Doctor out of genuine gratitude and affection, but the gap in their ages and the whispers of Canterbury make her position uneasy. Her mother, the Old Soldier, drags her to concerts and exhibitions in the name of duty, while a former suitor, Mr. Maldon, hovers at the edges of the household. She is watched by everyone, including David, and her quiet dignity under suspicion is one of the novel's most affecting studies in patience.

Miss Mowcher

supporting

Also known as the wary Mowcher, Mowcher, little Mowcher, Little Mowcher, Excellent Miss Mowcher

Miss Mowcher is a dwarf who earns her living attending to the hair and hands of fashionable ladies, and she carries herself with a theatrical self-possession that disarms the people who underestimate her. She is fond of gossip, fond of a joke, and not above a little matchmaking, but she is also more perceptive and more principled than her clients assume. When she realizes she has been used as a tool in someone else's cruelty, her anger is real, and it turns her into an unexpected ally.

Mr. Creakle

supporting

Also known as Creakle, Old Creakle

Creakle rules his school through fear, whispering threats and pinching ears with what he calls ferocious playfulness, while a wooden-legged assistant echoes his every word like a human megaphone. His cruelty extends even to his own household, where his thin, quiet wife and daughter sit wiping their eyes as he declares that flesh and blood rising against him is no flesh and blood at all. For the young David, newly arrived and already branded with a placard, Creakle is the first lesson that authority can be arbitrary, theatrical, and genuinely frightening.

Mrs. Gummidge

minor

Also known as this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge, old one Mrs. Gummidge, Missis Gummidge, Gummidge, wen Missis Gummidge

A widowed, complaining woman who lives with the Peggotty family.

Mr. Chillip

minor

Also known as The mild Mr. Chillip, Little Mr. Chillip

A timid doctor who attends David's birth.

Sophy Traddles

minor

Also known as Sophy, Of Sophy

Traddles's devoted wife, who helps support his large family.

Jip

minor

Also known as little Jip

Dora's small, spoiled pet dog.

Littimer

minor

Also known as the respectable Littimer, the staid Littimer, No Littimer, Mr. Littimer

Steerforth's smug, manipulative valet.

Martha Endell

minor

Also known as Martha, Martha Endell⁠—side

A fallen woman from Yarmouth who helps find Little Em'ly.

Miss Mills

minor

Also known as Happy Miss Mills, Julia Mills, Julia

Dora's sentimental friend and confidante.

Mr. Omer

minor

Also known as Omer, I. Mr. Omer

A friendly Yarmouth undertaker and tailor.

Mr. Mell

minor

Also known as Doctor Mell

A poor, kind usher at Salem House who is dismissed by Steerforth.

Mr. Quinion

minor

Also known as Quinion, Mr. ¬ÝQuinion

Manager of Murdstone and Grinby's warehouse where David works.

Mr. Jorkins

minor

Also known as Jorkins, demon Jorkins, the implacable Jorkins

Spenlow's silent, feared partner in the proctor firm.

Miss Larkins

minor

Also known as The eldest Miss Larkins, the eldest Miss Larkins, the Larkins, the late Miss Larkins

A beautiful older girl David admires as a youth.

Mr. Waterbrook

minor

Also known as Waterbrook

A pompous London merchant who employs Traddles.

Mr. Tiffey

minor

Also known as old Tiffey, Tiffey, Old Tiffey

Chief clerk at Spenlow and Jorkins's proctor office.

Mrs. Markleham

minor

Mrs. Strong's talkative, manipulative mother.

Clara Copperfield

minor

Also known as Clara, Miss Clarissa, Clarissa

David's gentle, beautiful mother who dies young.

Mrs. Crupp

minor

Also known as Next Mrs. Crupp

David's nosy, scheming landlady in London.

Jack Maldon

minor

Also known as Jack, Mr. Jack Maldon, Mr. Maldon, Maldon, Mr. Jack, John Maldon, John

Mrs. Strong's cousin and former suitor, a selfish naval officer.

Mrs. Heep

minor

Also known as Heep

Uriah Heep's fawning, sycophantic mother.

Mr. Sharp

minor

The head usher at Salem House school.

Mr. Heep

minor

Uriah Heep's father, briefly mentioned as a humble man.

Mr. Dolloby

minor

Also known as Mr. Dolloby⁠—Dolloby

A pawnbroker who buys David's waistcoat.