Samuel A. Weller a series of talented designers and potters and profited from their work. Charles Babcock Upjohn worked for him from 1885–1904, with the first and second Dickens lines, as well as Eocean and Corleone lines. The Dickens lines were copied from a very successful line of figurines produced by Doulton of England, based on Charles Dickens characters. Weller was amused that Sam Weller was also the name of a servant in the "Pickwick Papers". He is reported to have declared, "If Dickens can create a character named Sam Weller, the least I can do is reciprocate and name a line for
Racism in the work of Charles Dickens of the 1840s, and his creation of the antisemitic caricature of the character of Fagin. Authors Sally Ledger and Holly Furneaux, in their book "Dickens in Context" examine this puzzle as to how one can square away Dickens' racialism with concern with the poor and the downcast. They argue this can be explained by saying that Dickens was a nativist and "cultural chauvinist" in the sense of being highly ethnocentric and ready to justify British imperialism, but not a racist in the sense of being a "biological determinist" as was the anthropologist Robert Knox. That is, Dickens did not regard