The Pickwick Papers
'The Pickwick Papers' Summary
The Pickwick Papers is a sequence of loosely related adventures written for serialization in a periodical. The action is given as occurring 1827–28, though critics have noted some seeming anachronisms. For example, Dickens satirized the case of George Norton suing Lord Melbourne in 1836.
The novel's protagonist Samuel Pickwick, Esquire is a kind and wealthy old gentleman, the founder and perpetual president of the Pickwick Club. He suggests that he and three other "Pickwickians" should make journeys to places remote from London and report on their findings to the other members of the club. Their travels throughout the English countryside by coach provide the chief subject matter of the novel. A romantic misunderstanding with his landlady, the widow Mrs Bardell, results in one of the most famous legal cases in English literature, Bardell v. Pickwick, leading to them both being incarcerated in the Fleet Prison for debt.
Pickwick learns that the only way he can relieve the suffering of Mrs Bardell is by paying her costs in the action against himself, thus at the same time releasing himself from the prison.
Book Details
Language
EnglishOriginal Language
EnglishPublished In
1836Author
Charles Dickens
England
Charles Dickens created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7 February 18...
More on Charles DickensDownload eBooks
Listen/Download Audiobook
- Select Speed
Related books
The Idiot, Part 3 and Part 4 by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Idiot is a novel by the 19th-century Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was first published serially in the journal The Russian Messenger in 186...
Nobody's Boy by Hector Malot
This is a heartwarming and timeless novel that takes readers on an emotional journey of resilience, love, and the search for belonging. This beloved b...
Mount Royal Volume II by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The mystery deepens in the Canadian wilderness, as a young woman races to save her half-sister from a dangerous and powerful enemy. In Mount Royal Vo...
The Wailing Octopus by Harold L. Goodwin
It follows the journey of a marine biologist, Dr. Terry Kent, as he investigates a mysterious and deadly creature terrorizing a small island in the Pa...
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, set in a small Southern town in the 1930s. The story follows the trial of a b...
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
Peter Pan is the well-loved story of three children and their adventures in Neverland with the boy who refuses to grow up. Swashbuckling, fairy dust,...
Mardi Vol. 1 by Herman Melville
Have you ever wondered what lies beyond the veil of reality? In Herman Melville's classic novel, Mardi, a young man named Taji embarks on an epic jou...
Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief by James Fenimore Cooper
It is a satirical novel that takes readers on an unusual journey through the eyes of a handkerchief. The book is a fictional account of the life of a...
The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Marble Faun is Hawthorne's most unusual romance. Writing on the eve of the American Civil War, Hawthorne set his story in a fantastical Italy. The...
Poems of William Blake by William Blake
Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul are two books of poetry by the English poet and painter, Willi...
Reviews for The Pickwick Papers
No reviews posted or approved, yet...