Death and Mr. Pickwick
A Novel
-
-
1.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
Death and Mr. Pickwick is a vast, richly imagined, Dickensian work about the rough-and-tumble world that produced an author who defined an age. Like Charles Dickens did in his immortal novels, Stephen Jarvis has spun a tale full of preposterous characters, shaggy-dog stories, improbable reversals, skulduggery, betrayal, and valor-all true, and all brilliantly brought to life in his unputdownable book.
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, featuring the fat and lovable Mr. Pickwick and his Cockney manservant, Sam Weller, began as a series of whimsical sketches, the brainchild of the brilliant, erratic, misanthropic illustrator named Robert Seymour, a denizen of the back alleys and grimy courtyards where early nineteenth-century London's printers and booksellers plied their cutthroat trade. When Seymour's publishers, after trying to match his magical etchings with a number of writers, settled on a young storyteller using the pen name Boz, The Pickwick Papers went on to become a worldwide phenomenon, outselling every other book besides the Bible and Shakespeare's plays. And Boz, as the young Charles Dickens signed his work, became, in the eyes of many, the most important writer of his time. The fate of Robert Seymour, Mr. Pickwick's creator, a very different story-one untold before now.
Few novels deserve to be called magnificent. Death and Mr. Pickwick is one of them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this astounding first novel, Jarvis re-creates, in loving and exhaustive detail, the writing and publication of Charles Dickens's first novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, in 1836. Written under the pen name Boz, Pickwick made Dickens perhaps the first literary celebrity. But who deserves credit for creating Pickwick, the book's protagonist: Dickens, the man who created the text, or Robert Seymour, the caricaturist who came up with the name and the graphic image of the rotund Englishman? Jarvis is clearly on the side of Seymour and the book offers an impressively imagined account of Seymour, Dickens, and a huge host of others (the sheer scale of the book is, itself, Dickensian). This picaresque novel is structured with a framing story a conversation between a present-day narrator and a Mr. Imbelicate, who wants assistance in writing the results of his life's research on Dickens's "immortal book." Jarvis depicts a world in which popular culture was starting to mesh with the earliest forms of mass communications (print, magazines, and books). He convinces readers that, in Seymour's day, the image trumped the printed word, but Dickens and the wild success of Pickwick changed that. While Jarvis makes a powerful case for Seymour as the character's creator, it seems undeniable that Dickens's literary talents turned that creation into a phenomenon. The book is very long, and some may find some of its detours a bit wayward, but it is a staggering accomplishment, a panoramic perspective of 19th-century London and its creative class.
Customer Reviews
And The Point Is?
I will agree this is a fun romp through triviality and historical events and characters, pointing out the nonsense that led to the possibility of Dickens as a writer and how he may have stolen ideas.... But other than that it's a slog to get through, with no depth or characterization to care about. Finished it wondering why I bothered. No point to it, and many hours wasted.