The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club was published in twenty monthly parts by Chapman and Hall from March 1836 to November 1837 and made Dickens, at twenty-four, the most popular author in England. The project began as a series of sporting sketches to accompany illustrations by Robert Seymour; Seymour’s suicide after the second number freed Dickens to take the narrative in his own direction, and the arrival of Sam Weller in the fourth number transformed the book from a modest commercial project into a national phenomenon. Print runs climbed from 1,000 copies for the first number to 40,000 for the last.
The Novel
Samuel Pickwick, a retired businessman of benevolent disposition and comical innocence, travels through England with three companions: the amorous Tupman, the poetic Snodgrass, and the sportive Winkle. The novel is episodic — a series of encounters, misunderstandings, and interpolated tales — held together by Pickwick’s generous spirit and, from part four onward, by the genius of Sam Weller, his Cockney manservant, whose wit, loyalty, and street wisdom provide the comic counterweight to Pickwick’s naivety.
The novel darkens as it progresses: the Fleet Prison chapters, in which Pickwick is incarcerated for refusing to pay damages to his absurd landlady Mrs. Bardell, are Dickens’s first sustained treatment of imprisonment and injustice — themes he would return to throughout his career.
Collecting The Pickwick Papers
First edition in parts (Chapman and Hall, London, 1836–1837): Twenty monthly parts (the last being a double number) in green wrappers. Illustrated by Robert Seymour (2 plates), Robert William Buss (2 plates, suppressed), and Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”) (remaining plates).
Key identification points:
- Part I dated “March, 1836”
- Seymour plates in first two numbers
- Buss plates (suppressed) occasionally present
- “Phiz” plates throughout remainder
- Extensive advertisements (“Pickwick Advertiser”)
Market values:
- Complete in original parts with all points, fine: $30,000–$100,000
- Very good, some foxing: $10,000–$30,000
- First edition in book form (1 vol., 1837): $5,000–$15,000
- Individual early parts (especially #1): $2,000–$8,000
Pickwick in parts is the cornerstone of any serious Dickens collection. The bibliographic complexity (variant plates, suppressed illustrations, advertisement variants) has generated an entire sub-literature of scholarship and makes complete, correct copies genuinely scarce.