Cerita mengurus dengan hidup David Copperfield dari zaman kanak-kanak ke kematangan. David lahir di England pada 1820. Bapa David meninggal dunia enam bulan sebelum dia lahir, dan tujuh tahun kemudian, ibunya berkahwin dengan En Edward Murdstone. David diberikan alasan baik untuk tidak menyukai bapa tirinya dan mempunyai perasaan yang mirip terhadap kakak En Murdstone Jane, yang memindah ke dalam rumah tidak lama kemudian. En Murdstone menyebat David oleh kerana ketinggalan dalam pelajarannya. Berikutnya salah satu dari sebatan ini, David menggigitnya dan dikirimkan ke sebuah sekolah asrama, Salem House, dengan seorang guru besar tanpa belas kasihan, En. Creakle. Di sini dia berkawan dengan James Steerforth dan Tommy Traddles, yang dia bertemua kedua-dua mereka kemudian.

David kembali untuk cuti sekolah untuk mendapati bahawa ibunya mempunyai seorang bayi lelaki. Tidak lama kemudian selepas David pulang ke Salem House, ibunya dan bayinya meninggal dunia dan David harus pulang rumah selanjutnya. En Murdstone mengirimnya untuk bekerja dalam sebuah kilang di London, di mana Murdstone adalah seorang pemilik sama. Kebenaran grim reality of hand-to-mouth factory existence echoes Dickens' own travails in a blacking factory. His landlord, Mr Wilkins Micawber, is sent to a debtor's prison (the King's Bench Prison) after going bankrupt, and is there for several months before being released and moving to Plymouth. David now has nobody left to care for him in London, and decides to run away.

He walks all the way from London to Dover, to find his only relative, his aunt Miss Betsey. His eccentric Aunt Betsey Trotwood agrees to bring him up, despite Mr Murdstone visiting in a bid to regain custody of David. David's aunt renames him 'Trotwood Copperfield', soon shortened to "Trot", and for the rest of the novel he is called by either name, depending on whether he is communicating with someone he has known for a long time, or someone he has only recently met.

The story follows David as he grows to adulthood, and is enlivened by the many well-known characters who enter, leave and re-enter his life. These include Peggotty, his faithful former housekeeper for his mother, her family, and their orphaned niece Little Em'ly who lives with them and charms the young David. David's romantic but self-serving schoolfriend, Steerforth, seduces and dishonors Little Emily, triggering the novel's greatest tragedy; and his landlord's daughter and ideal "angel in the house," Agnes Wickfield, becomes his confidante. The two most familiar characters are David's sometime mentor, the constantly debt-ridden Mr Wilkins Micawber, and the devious and fraudulent clerk, Uriah Heep, whose misdeeds are eventually discovered with Micawber's assistance. Micawber is painted as a sympathetic character, even as the author deplores his financial ineptitude; and Micawber, like Dickens's own father, is briefly imprisoned for insolvency.

In typical Dickens fashion, the major characters get some measure of what they deserve, and few narrative threads are left hanging. Dan Peggotty safely transports Little Em'ly to a new life in Australia; accompanying these two central characters are Mrs. Gummidge and the Micawbers. Everybody involved finally finds security and happiness in their new lives in Australia. David first marries the beautiful but naïve Dora Spenlow, but she dies after failing to recover from a miscarriage early in their marriage. David then does some soul-searching and eventually marries and finds true happiness with the sensible Agnes, who had secretly always loved him. They have several children, including a daughter named in honor of Betsey Trotwood.