|
Charles Dickens
Iconography. Biography Selected Books Trivia Holy Grail of Dickens Books Dickens Kindle eBooks
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, to give its full title, was Charles Dickens's first novel,
published in 1836 - 37. Of course, the world today nows it as The Pickwick Papers...(scroll down)
DESCRIPTION
It was Dickens's publishers, Chapman & Hall, who come out with the germ of the
idea of the book. They asked him to write a story about a series of
illustrations by artist Robert Seymour depicting Cockney sporting events. Dickens
disliked the pictures, and came up with a new idea instead: he requested
that
SeymourSeymour was replaced by an illustrator called Robert Buss
and later by one of the most famous of Dickens's illustrators, Hablot Knoght Browne, better known by the pseudonym "Phiz".
The story centres on the journey of discovery a group of friends decide to
undertake and their adventures along the way. Dickens took the name of Pickwick
from the proprietor of a coach company in Bath, Moses Pickwick. Dickens
often used Pickwick's coaches to travel between London and Bath when he was working as a
journalist.
The characters whom Pickwick and his friends encounter became instant favourites
with Dickens's early readers. The commercial implications soon became apparent, and
soon shops could be found with such merchandise as china figurines and toby
jugs of the characters in the book. Also Mr Pickwick-style-spectacles and
waistcoats were soon the rage. Astonishingly, Dickens had started writing The Pickwick Papers when he was just
24 years old.
With The Pickwick Papers becoming a marketing phenomenon and turned the author into a household name. It was printed in 20 monthly parts, beginning in relative obscurity but becoming a cult classic.
Dickens often used real places as inspiration for his stories. The
White Hart Inn in Southwark appears prominently in the book.
Sourced & abbreviated from the Holy Grail of Dickens Books - Charles Dickens [Hardcover] by Lucinda Dickens Hawksley
|
