Introduction
Before We Begin: The Accidental Novel
In early 1836, a young newspaper reporter was offered a job that didn't look like much. The publishers Chapman and Hall had a series of comic sporting prints by the popular artist Robert Seymour.
They showed hopeless Cockney gentlemen failing at hunting, shooting and fishing, and the publishers needed someone to write the words to go underneath. The reporter was 24 and wrote under the name "Boz". His real name was Charles Dickens.
Dickens had other ideas almost immediately. He talked the publishers into letting the story lead and the pictures follow.
The sportsmen became the Pickwick Club: Samuel Pickwick, a round, kind-hearted, retired businessman, and three friends who set out to travel England and report back on everything they find.
It didn't go well at first. The first monthly number sold only a few hundred copies. Then Seymour died suddenly, before the second…
