The popularity of The Pickwick Papers increased dramatically with the introduction, in chapter 10, of Pickwick's servant Samuel Weller, who councils his master with charming Cockney wisdom.
Comparisons have been made between the idealistic Mr. Pickwick and his faithful servant Samuel Weller and Cervante's Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
Gray's Inn
Guildhall
The Borough
Cheapside
Waterloo Bridge
Fleet Prison
| The Pickwick Papers - Published in monthly parts Mar 1836
- Oct 1837 Read it online | Buy it at Amazon.com | Video 
When artist Robert
Seymour proposed to publishers Chapman
and Hall a series of engravings
featuring Cockney sporting life, with accompanying text published
in monthly installments, they readily accepted and set about the task
of finding a writer. The publishers were turned down by several writers
and finally asked 24-year-old Charles Dickens to provide the text.
Dickens accepted and argued successfully that the text should be foremost
and the engravings should complement the story. Seymour, an established
artist but without recent success, was troubled with the direction
the upstart writer was taking his project and with Dickens' suggestions
of changes to the illustrations.
Chapman and Hall decided to continue with the project and, after trying artist R. W. Buss, whose work was deemed unsatisfactory, hired 20-year-old Hablot Knight Browne as illustrator. Browne, who took the nickname "Phiz" to complement Dickens' "Boz", went on to illustrate Dickens' work for the next 23 years.  Dickens
took an active role in redesigning the project, the format was changed
from 24 pages of text and four illustrations to 32 pages of text and
two illustrations. Dickens also abandoned the original concept of
the "sporting club", which had been Seymour's idea (Dickens noted
that despite spending a portion of his childhood in the country, that
he was no sportsman) and began to tie the sketches together into a
more cohesive novel. The novel, a still somewhat loose collection of the adventures of Samuel Pickwick and his friends, was a huge success. Chapman and Hall printed only 1000 copies of the first monthly installment, at the end of serialization 40,000 copies were being printed. Pickwick had taken Britain, and later the world, by storm and had successfully launched Dickens to celebrity status. |
| Mr. Pickwick in the Fleet When Mr. Pickwick's landlady, Mrs. Bardell, brings a breach of promise suit against him and wins, the innocent Pickwick refuses to pay the damages, opting instead to be consigned to the Fleet debtor's prison.  Upon
entering the Fleet he undergoes an initiation known as "sitting for
your portrait" where all of the turnkeys (jailers) study Mr. Pickwick's
appearance to differentiate him from visitors to the prison who are
allowed to come and go during the day. Pickwick is appalled at conditions in the prison but is later told by a fellow prisoner that "money was, in the Fleet, just what money was out of it" and is able to purchase a furnished private room where he remains for three months. Imprisonment for debt is a theme Dickens uses frequently, his father having been imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtor's prison when Dickens was a child. |
 March 1836 April 1836 Marries Catherine Hogarth Original Pickwick Papers illustrator Robert Seymour commits suicide. Hablot Browne replaces him. November 1836 Dickens agrees to edit Bentley's Miscellany, resigns as reporter for the Morning Chronicle. January 1837 Son Charles Culliford (Charley) Dickens Born February 1837 First Installment of Oliver Twist published in Bentley's Miscellany March 1837 Moves from chambers at Furnival's Inn to a house at 48 Doughty Street May 1837 Catherine's sister Mary Hogarth dies June 1837 Grieving for his beloved sister-in-law Dickens misses deadlines for the only time in his life. Monthly issues of Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist are not published. October 1837 |
