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 number was out, and the whole project nearly collapsed.
After a brief false start with another artist, Hablot Knight Browne took over. He was known as "Phiz", and he would go on to illustrate Dickens for more than twenty years.
Then, in the fourth number, Dickens introduced Sam Weller, who cleaned boots at a London inn. Readers loved him.
Sales jumped from hundreds to around 40,000 copies a month, and Pickwick became a craze.
There were Pickwick hats, Pickwick cigars, Pickwick coats, joke books, stage versions, and a whole industry of unauthorised knock-offs. It was arguably the first mass fandom in publishing, and it made Dickens famous at 24.
There are a couple of things worth knowing before you start. The story is set in 1827 and 1828, so this is Georgian England: stagecoaches, coaching inns, and elections you could practically buy.
The early chapters are loose and episodic, because Dickens was working it out as he went. Stick with it. Once Sam Weller turns up, the book finds its heart.
Pickwick was first sold in monthly parts for a shilling each. We're bringing it to you weekly, which is about as close as we can get to how that first audience found it: one instalment at a time, with no idea what came next.
