Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers
Dickens' first novel which came out in installments in a paper which was usual at the time. It was extremely popular at the time of publication leading to hotly anticipated next installments and caused civil disorder in the docks in New York as people scrambled to get a copy of the papers sent from England. It made Dickens famous and rightly so. Typically it's a great story with humour and some tribulations incorporated into it with a brilliant insight into human behaviours which are timeless. Character description is fantastic as ever and of course the main characters are larger than life. Not a complicated plot and without real surprises it's an apparent account of the excursions of The Pickwick Club written down (the "papers") and chronicling the scrapes and they get into and people they meet. The central character is a wealthy retired businessman (Pickwick) who is by turns efficient and sharp but also bumbling and naive. His character is very gentle and always looking to help others as best he can. The other main character (Sam Weller) becomes his manservant although the relationship is more of a friend or possibly a father figure. Mostly the plots are gentle and the few nasty characters are treated with humour mostly ending up on the good side or at least not dominant. However, there is a darker side that is explored more in Dickens as yet unwritten novels especially related to the debtors prison. There are also a few short stories inserted as narrated by various characters and these are far from gentle and bring a darker edge to the story indeed nearer to later novels. In addition to the descriptions of landscapes, cities and characters there is a lot of travelling around the country to which I was often researching the different types of coaches etc. through web searches. Also looked up the various inns and places that are mentioned and satisfying to know that at least some are still around in London two centuries later. A thoroughly enjoyable book and I must read more of his.
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