Other notable adventures include Mr Pickwick's attempts to defend a lawsuit brought by his landlady, Mrs Bardell, who (through an apparent misunderstanding on her part) is suing him for the breach of promise to marry her. The relationship between the idealistic and unworldly Pickwick and the astute cockney Weller has been likened to that between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. First seen working at the White Hart Inn in The Borough, Weller is taken on by Mr Pickwick as a personal servant and companion on his travels and provides his own oblique ongoing narrative on the proceedings. These include Jingle's nearly-successful attempted elopement with the spinster Rachael Wardle of Dingley Dell manor, misadventures with Dr Slammer, and others.įurther humour is provided when the comic cockney Sam Weller makes his advent in chapter 10 of the novel. His devious tricks repeatedly land the Pickwickians in trouble. Alfred Jingle, who joins the cast in chapter two, provides an aura of comic villainy. Each character in The Pickwick Papers, as in many other Dickens novels, is drawn comically, often with exaggerated personalities. Its main literary value and appeal is formed by its numerous memorable characters.

A distinctive and valuable feature of the work is the generally accurate descriptions of the old coaching inns of England. Their travels throughout the English countryside by coach provide the chief theme of the novel. To extend his researches into the quaint and curious phenomena of life, he suggests that he and three other 'Pickwickians' (Mr Nathaniel Winkle, Mr Augustus Snodgrass, and Mr Tracy Tupman) should make journeys to remote places from London and report on their findings to the other members of the club. The novel's main character, Samuel Pickwick, Esquire, is a kind and wealthy old gentleman, and the founder and perpetual president of the Pickwick Club. The action is given as occurring 1827–8, though critics have noted some seeming anachronisms. Written for publication as a serial, The Pickwick Papers is a sequence of loosely-related adventures. Dickens (still writing under the pseudonym of Boz) increasingly took over the unsuccessful monthly publication after the original illustrator Robert Seymour had committed suicide. He was asked to contribute to the project as an up-and-coming writer following the success of Sketches by Boz, published in 1836 (most of Dickens' novels were issued in shilling instalments before being published in the complete volume). The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (also known as The Pickwick Papers) is the first novel by Charles Dickens.

The pickwick papers book review