Electrical Undercurrents in David Copperfield

Abstract:The evolution in spring 1849 of Dickens's new eponym is traced, showing that the link between "Mag" (as "halfpenny") and "Copperfield" is not merely metallic but electrical. The forename "David" is also interrogated, revealing Humphry Davy as a major inspiration, and Robert Hunt's 1848 work The Poetry of Science as Dickens's immediate source for his knowledge of recent scientific advances. The researches of both Davy and Michael Faraday are also shown to lie behind the newly-coined name "Copperfield." The discussion moves on to reveal how the name "Uriah Heep" encodes a number of key significations that link the character to David Copperfield and contemporary scientific developments in previously unsuspected ways, as well as to the electrically-sparked monster in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.