The Pickwick Papers The Pickwick Papers The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (also known as The Pickwick Papers) was Charles Dickens's first novel. He was asked to contribute to the project as an up-and-coming writer following the success of "Sketches by Boz", published in 1836 (most of Dickens' novels were issued in shilling instalments before being published as complete volumes). Dickens (still writing under the pseudonym of Boz) increasingly took over the unsuccessful monthly publication after the original illustrator Robert Seymour had committed suicide. With the introduction of Sam Weller in chapter 10, the book became the first real publishing phenomenon, with
Dickens' London Dickens' London Charles Dickens' works are especially associated with London which is the setting for many of his novels. These works do not just use London as a backdrop but are about the city and its character. Dickens described London as a Magic lantern, a popular entertainment of the Victorian era, which projected images from slides. Of all Dickens' characters 'none played as important a role in his work as that of London itself', it fired his imagination and made him write. In a letter to John Forster, in 1846, Dickens wrote 'a day in London sets me up and