David Copperfield has been noted as being the blueprint for the genre of Bildungsroman, a novel particularly popular in the Victorian era, which denotes the development of the protagonist and tells the tale of a characters growth within their world and ultimately within themselves.  Dickens wrote of David Copperfield: ‘Of all my books I like this the best’.  Readers have subsequently come to share the author’s own enthusiasm for the classic, possibly because of its autobiographical form.  The story follows the life of Copperfield through many sufferings and great adversity. Like most of Charles Dickens's novels, David Copperfield was published in 19 monthly one-shilling installments.