The Personal History of David copperfield was issued in monthly numbers, beginning In May, 1849, and extending to November, 1850. The circulation averaged about twenty-five thousand copies a month. After it was completed, it attained a popularity unexampled among Dickens's novels, with the single exception of Pickwick, that gentleman, and his friends and associates, maintaining a steady preeminence of popularity over all the succeeding characters that Dickens created. To the present moment The Pickwick Papers is the most salable of all the author s books.