The Pickwick Papers

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens is the novel that launched one of the greatest careers in the history of fiction — the picaresque adventures of the amiable Samuel Pickwick and his companions as they travel through England, encountering rogues, innocents, comedy, and pathos at every turn. Published in serial form beginning in 1836, the novel made Dickens famous overnight and established the conventions of the Pickwick Club’s misadventures as a shared cultural reference that persisted throughout the Victorian era. The novel is looser and more episodic than Dickens’s mature works, but it has an exuberance and comic energy that is uniquely its own. Published by Wordsworth Classics in an accessible edition, this is an essential introduction to Dickens and a genuine pleasure for anyone interested in Victorian fiction and the tradition of the comic novel.