Jonathan Rose, "How Historians Study Reader Response: or, What did Jo Think of Bleak House?": "George Acorn recalled that, growing up in extreme poverty in London's East End, he scraped up 3 1/2d to buy a used copy of David Copperfield. His parents soundly thrashed him when they learned he had wasted so much money on a book, but later he read it to them: "'And how we all loved it ... how we all cried together at poor old Peggotty's distress!'"