About this book
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (commonly known as The Pickwick Papers) is the first novel published by Charles Dickens. The Posthumous Papers Of The Pickwick Club catapulted the 24-year-old author to immediate fame. Readers were captivated by the adventures of the poet Snodgrass, the lover Tupman, the sportsman Winkle &, above all, by that quintessentially English Quixote, Mr. Pickwick, & his cockney Sancho Panza, Sam Weller. From the hallowed turf of Dingley Dell Cricket Club to the unholy fracas of the Eatanswill election, via the Fleet debtor’s prison, characters & incidents sprang to life from Dickens’s pen, to form an enduringly popular work of ebullient humor & literary invention
The novel was published in 19 issues over 20 months by Chapman and Hall, London in 1836.
After the publication the widow of illustrator Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any specific input, writing that "Mr. Seymour never originated or suggested an incident, a phrase, or a word, to be found in the book.
Summary
The adventures of the immortal Pickwick Club, headed by good Mr. Pickwick himself, have kept readers laughing for nearly two centuries. Following the intrepidly bumbling Pickwickians along the highways and byways of old England, Charles Dickens creates a vivid world of highwaymen, duels, lawsuits, jails, and hilarious romantic imbrogliosbut a world too of deeply affecting human warmth and generosity. Filled with a host of indelible characters, [viii] The Pickwick Papers has never ceased to enjoy the popularity it won with its initial publicationwhen it rocketed its author to sudden fame and launched a career without equal in the history of the English novel.
With an Afterword by Jasper Fforde
From the publisher
The adventures of the immortal Pickwick Club, headed by good Mr. Pickwick himself, have kept readers laughing for nearly two centuries. Following the intrepidly bumbling Pickwickians along the highways and byways of old England, Charles Dickens creates a vivid world of highwaymen, duels, lawsuits, jails, and hilarious romantic imbroglios--but a world too of deeply affecting human warmth and generosity. Filled with a host of indelible characters, [viii] The Pickwick Papers has never ceased to enjoy the popularity it won with its initial publication--when it rocketed its author to sudden fame and launched a career without equal in the history of the English novel.
With an Afterword by Jasper Fforde
First Edition Identification
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club first published in book format in 1837 by Chapman & Hall, London. It was illustrated with 43 engraved plates by R. Seymour and H. T. Browne.
Details
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Title
The Pickwick Papers
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Author
Charles Dickens; Afterword by Jasper Fforde
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Binding
Mass Market Paperbound
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Edition
Reissue
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Pages
848
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Volumes
1
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Language
ENG
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Publisher
Signet Book
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Date
2004-06-01
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ISBN
9780451529381 / 0451529383
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Weight
0.85 lbs (0.39 kg)
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Dimensions
6.7 x 4.2 x 1.5 in (17.02 x 10.67 x 3.81 cm)
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Ages
18 to UP years
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Grade levels
13 - UP
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Reading level
1160
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Library of Congress subjects
England, Humorous fiction
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Library of Congress Catalog Number
2003070370
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Dewey Decimal Code
FIC
About the author
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was born at Landport, near Portsmouth, England. The second of eight children in a family often plagued by debt, Dickens at ten saw his father arrested and confined in the Marshalsea, a debtors' prison in London, and although a small boy, he was placed in a blacking factory where he worked at labeling bottles, visiting John Dickens on Sundays. On his father's release, Charles returned to school, taught himself shorthand, and at sixteen became a paramilitary reporter. At twenty-four, his career took off with the publication of Sketches by Boz, which was followed by The Pickwick Papers the next year. As a novelist and magazine editor, he had a long run of serialized successes, including Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and A Tale of Two Cities. Even as ill health plagued him at the end of his life, he continued his popular dramatic readings from his fiction to an adoring public, which included Queen Victoria. He died at Gads Hill, his home in Kent, leaving his final manuscript, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished.
Jasper Fforde worked in the film industry for nineteen years, where his varied career included the role of "focus puller" on films such as Goldeneye and The Mask of Zorro. After he had received seventy-six rejection letters from publishers, his first novel, The Eyre Affair, was published in 2001 and became an international bestselling phenomenon. He has published six sequels, as well as multiple volumes in the Nursery Crime, Shades of Grey, and Last Dragonslayer series. Fforde lives and writes in Wales.