num_pages: 863
description: Charles Dickens's satirical masterpiece, The Pickwick Papers, catapulted the young writer into literary fame when it was first serialized in 1836-37. It recounts the rollicking adventures of the members of the Pickwick Club as they travel about England getting into all sorts of mischief. Laugh-out-loud funny and endlessly entertaining, the book also reveals Dickens's burgeoning interest in the parliamentary system, lawyers, the Poor Laws, and the ills of debtors' prisons. As G. K. Chesterton noted, "Before [Dickens] wrote a single real story, he had a kind of vision ... a map full of fantastic towns, thundering coaches, clamorous market-places, uproarious inns, strange and swaggering figures. That vision was Pickwick."In 1836 Dickens was invited by his publishers to write a "monthly something" illustrated by sporting places; thus the Pickwick Club, a brilliantly comic novel was born.
language: English
title: Pickwick Papers
titlecomplete: Pickwick Papers
characters: Bob Sawyer, Arabella Allen, Solomon Pell, Job Trotter, Mr. Dodson, Emily Wardle, Dr. Slammer, Alfred Jingle, Augustus Snodgrass, Benjamin Allen, Sam Weller, Nathaniel Winkle, Mr. Wardle, Mr. Perker, Tony Weller, Mr. Fogg, Samuel Pickwick, Rachael Wardle, Tracy Tupman, Mrs. Bardell
genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, 19th Century, Classic Literature, Victorian, British Literature, Novels, Literature, Humor, Classics
ratings_count: 29011
publisher: Signet Classics