page_title: The Pickwick Papers
section_title: Adaptations
hierarchical_section_title: The Pickwick Papers / Adaptations
caption_attribution_description: English: Hablot Knight Browne - The Pickwick Papers, Pickwick at the slide
context_page_description: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club 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 Britain's first real publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books, and other merchandise.
  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."
context_section_description: The novel has been adapted to film, television, and radio:
  1913 – The Pickwick Papers, a silent three-reel film featuring John Bunny as Samuel Pickwick
  1921 – The Adventures of Mr. Pickwick, silent, lost, starring Frederick Volpe and Hubert Woodward
  1936 – On 13 November 1936 (less than two weeks after the BBC began regularly scheduled television broadcasts) The British Music Drama Opera Company under the direction of Vladimir Rosing presented the world's first televised opera: Pickwick by Albert Coates.
  1938 – 'The Pickwick Papers', Orson Welles's Mercury Theater on the Air radio adaptation (20 November 1938)
  1952 – starring James Hayter, Nigel Patrick, Alexander Gauge and Harry Fowler (the first sound film version, and to this day, the only sound version of the story released to cinemas)
  1985 – an animated adaptation
  In 1985 BBC released a 12-part 350-minute miniseries starring Nigel Stock, Alan Parnaby, Clive Swift and Patrick Malahide.
  According to Retrospect Opera, there was an early attempt at a theatrical adaptation with songs by W.T. Moncrieff and entitled Samuel Weller, or, The Pickwickians, in 1837. This was followed in 1871 by John Hollingshead's stage play Bardell versus Pickwick. The first successful musical was Pickwick (sometimes Pickwick, A Dramatic Cantata) by Sir Francis Burnand and Edward Solomon and premiered at the Comedy Theatre on 7 February 1889.
  Pickwick by Cyril Ornadel, Wolf Mankowitz, and Leslie Bricusse was a musical version which premiered in Manchester in 1963 before transferring to the West End. It originally starred Harry Secombe (later cast as "Mr Bumble" in the film version of Oliver!) in the title role and Roy Castle as "Sam Weller". Although it was a major success in London, running for 694 performances, Pickwick failed in the United States when it opened on Broadway in 1965. In 1969, the BBC filmed the musical as the TV movie Pickwick with Secombe and Castle reprising their stage roles. Both the stage and TV versions featured the song If I Ruled the World, which became a hit for Secombe and other singers such as Tony Bennett and Sammy Davis Jr..
  Part of The Pickwick Papers were featured in Charles Dickens' Ghost Stories, a 60-minute animation made by Emerald City Films (1987). These included The Ghost in the Wardrobe, The Mail Coach Ghosts, and The Goblin and the Gravedigger.
  Stephen Jarvis's novel Death and Mr Pickwick (2014) is in part a literary thriller, examining in forensic detail the question of whether the idea, character and physiognomy of Samuel Pickwick originated with Dickens, or with the original illustrator and instigator of the project, Robert Seymour. The conclusion of the narrator is that the accepted version of events given by Dickens and the publisher Edward Chapman is untrue.
caption: Mr Pickwick Slides
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