The Pickwick Papers

The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens' first novel, is a humorous masterpiece that launched the 24-year-old author to instant fame. The exploits of the poet Snodgrass, the lover Tupman, the sportsman Winkle, and, above all, that uniquely English Quixote, Mr Pickwick, and his cockney Sancho Panza, Sam Weller, enthralled readers. Characters and scenes burst to life from Dickens' pen, from the sacred grounds of Dingley Dell Cricket Club to the unholy ruckus of the Eatanswill election, via the Fleet debtor's jail, to make an enduringly popular book of exuberant wit and creative creativity. "A great hokey-cokey of eccentrics, conmen, phony politicians, amorous widows and wily, witty servants, somehow catching an essence of what it is to be English, celebrating companionship, generosity, good nature, in the figure of Samuel Pickwick, Esq, one of the great embodiments in literature of benevolence." — Actor and director Simon Callow on The Pickwick Papers.