The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club



Creator

Date

1837

Identifier

Special Collections de Beer Eb 1837 D

Publisher

London: Chapman and Hall

Abstract

In early March 1836, Dickens signed a contract with the fledging firm of Chapman and Hall, who gambled on serial publication of Pickwick Papers, Dickens’s first novel. He was to receive £14 for each 12,000-word instalment. Only 1,000 of the first number were printed; by late November 1837, 40,000 copies were being sold. The appearance of Sam Weller clinched Dickens’s reputation, and Pickwick Papers was a runaway bestseller. This first book edition of the twenty instalments contains illustrations by Robert Seymour, who completed them up to the second number; R. W. Buss, who was an interim illustrator; and then 20 year old Hablot Browne, who would become Dickens’s most consistent artistic collaborator.

[Title page and frontispiece from Charles Dickens's The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. 1st bound edition. Illustrations by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz).]

Files

Cab 3 Pickwick Title Pg.jpg

Citation

Charles Dickens, “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage, accessed November 24, 2024, https://otago.ourheritage.ac.nz/items/show/7193.