The Pickwick Papers

Dickens’s first novel follows the good-hearted, bumbling Mr. Pickwick and his fellow club members on a series of comic misadventures through the inns and highways of England, aided by the irrepressible cockney servant Sam Weller. Overflowing with humor, memorable characters, and warm satire of English life, the loosely linked episodes made the young Dickens a national sensation almost overnight. Exuberant and endlessly entertaining, The Pickwick Papers launched one of the greatest careers in literature and still delights with its comic energy and affectionate portrait of a vanished England. It is Dickens at his most joyful, a fountain of laughter and good nature.