Pickwick Papers :: Free Essays Online

Pickwick Papers Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers Dickens’ first novel, originally titled The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, began as a concept first brought forth in the early part of the year 1836. It was at this time when Robert Seymour, an etcher and caricaturist of the day, approached publishers Chapman and Hall with his idea for a series of humorous sketches depicting the mannerisms and way of life of â€Å"Cockney amateurs on holiday in the field.† Seymour had already made a success of sketches that depicted similar subject matter, namely that of Cockney sports, and the follies of members of the fictional â€Å"Nimrod Club.† The publishers agreed to fund the project, under the condition that the sketches be accompanied by some literary commentary. Upon agreement, the publishers set out to find a writer and were turned down several times before they approached Charles Dickens, then a young journalist who had recently published a collection of his own called Sketches by Boz. His role , they informed him, would be to provide a text that was secondary and arising only from the sketches. At the time, Dickens, only twenty-three years old, was about to be married and was willing to take on the project as a means of earning some extra money. He showed his cunning even at that early age, though, when he convinced the publishers that there should be a shift in priorities, telling them that he believed that it would be â€Å"infinitely better for the plates to arise naturally out of the text† (Forster). He also informed the publishers that the original concept, which was to focus on Cockney Sportsmanship was a tired subject, that had been done all too often in the past, and he himself knew very little about the subject. Dickens then proposed to alter the concept and allow for a â€Å"freer range of English scenes and people – a panorama of rural England to complement his mainly urban Sketches by Boz† (Kinsley). On March 26, 1836, The Times announced that â€Å"on the 31st would be published the first shilling of the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, edited by Boz. Shortly after, that same publication announced that on April 2nd, Mr.