- The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (also known as The Pickwick Papers) was Charles Dickens’s first novel. Because of his success with Sketches by Boz published in 1836, Dickens was asked by the publisher Chapman & Hall to supply descriptions to explain a series of comic “cockney sporting plates” by illustrator Robert Seymour**, and to connect them into a novel. The book became a publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books, and other merchandise. On its cultural impact, Nicholas Dames in The Atlantic writes, “’Literature’ is not a big enough category for Pickwick. It defined its own, a new one that we have learned to call “entertainment.” Published in 19 issues over 20 months, the success of The Pickwick Papers popularised serialised fiction and cliffhanger endings.
- Seymour’s widow claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband’s, but Dickens strenuously denied any specific input in his preface to the 1867 edition: “Mr Seymour never originated or suggested an incident, a phrase, or a word, to be found in the book.”
- Dickens was working as a Parliamentary reporter and a roving journalist at the age of 24, and he had published a collection of sketches on London life as Sketches by Boz. Publisher Chapman & Hall was projecting a series of “cockney sporting plates” by illustrator Robert Seymour. There was to be a club, the members of which were to be sent on hunting and fishing expeditions into the country. Their guns were to go off by accident, and fishhooks were to get caught in their hats and trousers, and these and other misadventures were to be depicted in Seymour’s comic plates. They asked Dickens to supply the description necessary to explain the plates and to connect them into a sort of picture novel that was fashionable at the time. He protested that he knew nothing of sport, but still accepted the commission.
- “A great hokey-cokey of eccentrics, conmen, phony politicians, amorous widows and wily, witty servants, somehow catching an essence of what it is to be English, celebrating companionship, generosity, good nature, in the figure of Samuel Pickwick, Esq, one of the great embodiments in literature of benevolence.”— Actor and director Simon Callow on The Pickwick Papers.
- The Pickwick Papers is a sequence of loosely related adventures written for serialization in a periodical. The action is given as occurring 1827–28, though critics have noted some seeming anachronisms. For example, Dickens satirized the case of George Norton suing Lord Melbourne in 1836.
- The novel’s protagonist Samuel Pickwick, Esquire is a kind and wealthy old gentleman, the founder and perpetual president of the Pickwick Club. He suggests that he and three other “Pickwickians” should make journeys to places remote from London and report on their findings to the other members of the club. Their travels throughout the English countryside by coach provide the chief subject matter of the novel. A romantic misunderstanding with his landlady, the widow Mrs Bardell, results in one of the most famous legal cases in English literature, Bardell v. Pickwick, leading to them both being incarcerated in the Fleet Prison for debt. Pickwick learns that the only way he can relieve the suffering of Mrs Bardell is by paying her costs in the action against himself, thus at the same time releasing himself from the prison.
- Pickwick, Sam Weller, and his father Tony briefly reappeared in 1840 in the magazine Master Humphrey’s Clock. Master Humphrey’s Clock is the name of a literary club founded by Mr Humphrey, whose members read out stories to the others. Pickwick is a member, and there is a mirror club in the kitchen, Mr. Weller’s Watch, run by Sam Weller.
- Characters:
- Central characters
- Samuel Pickwick – the main protagonist and founder of the Pickwick Club. Following his description in the text, Pickwick is usually portrayed by illustrators as a round-faced, clean-shaven, portly gentleman wearing spectacles.
- Nathaniel Winkle – a young friend of Pickwick’s and his travelling companion; he considers himself a sportsman, though he turns out to be dangerously inept when handling horses and guns.
- Augustus Snodgrass – another young friend and companion; he considers himself a poet, though there is no mention of any of his own poetry in the novel.
- Tracy Tupman – the third travelling companion, a fat and middle-aged man who nevertheless considers himself a romantic lover.
- Sam Weller – Mr Pickwick’s valet, and a source of idiosyncratic proverbs and advice.
- Tony Weller – Sam’s father, a loquacious coachman.
- Alfred Jingle – a strolling actor and charlatan, noted for telling bizarre anecdotes in a distinctively extravagant, disjointed style.
- Supporting characters
- Joe – the “fat boy” who consumes great quantities of food and constantly falls asleep in any situation at any time of day; Joe’s sleep problem is the origin of the medical term Pickwickian syndrome, which ultimately led to the subsequent description of obesity hypoventilation syndrome.
- Job Trotter – Mr Jingle’s wily servant, whose true slyness is only ever seen in the first few lines of a scene, before he adopts his usual pretence of meekness.
- Mr Wardle – owner of a farm in Dingley Dell. Mr Pickwick’s friend, they meet at the military review in Rochester. Joe is his servant.
- Rachael Wardle – Mr. Wardle’s spinster sister, who tries in vain to elope with the unscrupulous Jingle.
- Mr Perker – an attorney of Mr Wardle, and later of Mr Pickwick.
- Mary – “a well-shaped female servant” and Sam Weller’s “Valentine”.
- Mrs Martha Bardell – Mr Pickwick’s widowed landlady who brings a case against him for breach of promise.
- Emily Wardle – one of Mr Wardle’s daughters, very fond of Mr Snodgrass.
- Arabella Allen – a friend of Emily Wardle and sister of Ben Allen. She later elopes with Mr. Winkle and marries him.
- Benjamin “Ben” Allen – Arabella’s brother, a dissipated medical student.
- Robert “Bob” Sawyer – Ben Allen’s friend and fellow student.
- Mr Stiggins – red-nosed alcoholic, avaricious and hypocritical Nonconformist minister at the United Grand Junction, Ebenezer Temperance Association who inadvertently causes the death of the second Mrs Weller.
- Central characters
Pickwick Papers (1836) – Charles Dickens
About the Author: Abirlal Mukherjee (Mukhopadhyay)
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