A Study Guide for Charles Dickens' "The Pickwick Papers"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Charles Dickens' "The Pickwick Papers," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Mar 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535820646

Book preview

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The Pickwick Papers

Charles Dickens

1836–1837

Introduction

Popularly referred to as The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens's first novel is actually titled The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. The novel's protagonist is Samuel Pickwick: wealthy, unworldly, unmarried, portly, bespectacled, slightly aging, and benevolent but naive. Pickwick founds and leads the Pickwick Club and joins a group of the club's members to travel throughout England in search of antiquities and other curiosities. The conceit of the novel, established in the first chapter, is that it is a record of the club's adventures and that its posthumous papers have been edited by the author. The novel was originally conceived as commentary for sporting illustrations drawn by the popular caricaturist Robert Seymour, but it quickly took on a life of its own, particularly after Seymour's untimely death. The illustrations for most of the rest of the novel were drawn by H. K. Phiz Browne, who would work with Dickens for more than two decades.

The novel, in common with many novels of the Victorian era, was first published serially—in this case, in monthly parts from April 1836 to November 1837. Often, serially published novels appeared a few chapters at a time in magazines, but The Pickwick Papers was published (in London) in small booklets that could be purchased for a shilling each. Later, novels that first appeared this way were published as bound books.

The Pickwick Papers launched Dickens's career as one of the Victorian age's preeminent novelists. Particularly after the first appearance of Pickwick's servant, Sam Weller, interest in the novel swelled, and by the end of its run a phenomenal forty thousand copies of each part were printed. In time, Dickens became a household name and almost a revered public figure. Although many critics regard Dickens's later novels—Great Expectations, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend—as richer and more complex, Pickwick continues to hold an honored place in Dickens's canon among the author's fans for its warm comedy, beloved characters, and gentle wisdom. The novel spawned a host of imitators and illustrators, and still today, people can purchase knickknacks and gift items—coffee cups, Christmas ornaments, T-shirts, wall clocks, pillows, note cards, posters, ceramics, canes—with themes and illustrations from The Pickwick Papers. The Pickwick Papers is available in numerous editions, including one published by Oxford University Press in 2008.

Author Biography

Dickens was born in Landport, near Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, on February 7, 1812, the second of eight children of John Dickens and Elizabeth Barrow; the house in which he was born is now the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum. When Dickens was twelve years old, his father, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, encountered financial troubles and was imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Prison (an experience Dickens drew on in having Pickwick imprisoned in the Fleet