The Pickwick Papers
Summary

The Pickwick Papers was Dickens’ first novel and was serialised under the title The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club between April 1836 and November 1837 when its author was only in his mid-twenties. Unlike some of his later works it is extremely episodic and comic. It always shows its origins in a periodical with its cliff-hangers and the way Dickens changes the story and various characters’ position in the novel as it grows and according to their popularity (such the Wellers). Mr Samuel Pickwick is the founder and chairman of the absurd Pickwick Club which consists Tupman, Snodgrass and Winkle who go through various highly amusing and often quite ridiculous adventures that are scantily interconnected and never amount to a complex sequence of events until perhaps Pickwick’s disastrous misunderstanding with Mrs Bardell. The story instead progresses near-randomly through trips to Rochester (and the meeting with the awful Jingle who challenges Winkle to a duel), Dingley Dell, Eatanswill and Bury St Edmunds. In these stages of the novel the only elements holding the plot together are the troublesome rascal Jingle and his servant Trotter who recur often. Later, Pickwick ends up rather unfortunately in the Fleet Prison and various romances ensue for the main characters to general amusement for the reader if never a sense of great import or substance. Although the book begins Dickens’ lengthy concern about prisons and the evil of lawyers, it is less dark and full of mystery than later works.

Table of contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57

  By PanEris using Melati.

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