Death and Mr Pickwick

A huge and hugely impressive first novel for both fans of immersive reads and of Dickens’ London. - Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist
2In 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...it is a staggering accomplishment, a panoramic perspective of nineteenth-century London and its creative class. - Publishers Weekly starred review

The Pickwick Papers was a literary phenomenon like no other. Issued in monthly parts between March 1936 and November 1837, its success was unprecedented in the history literature. The first part had a print run of 400 copies; by the fifteenth the print run was 40,000 copies. Chapman and Hall then issued it as a book, which became a massive bestseller and launched Dickens as the most popular author of the age.

In telling the story of The Pickwick Papers Stephen Jarvis noses his way down every byway with any connection to the great book. Read Death and Mr Pickwick and you will discover everything about Victorian print shops, theatre, publishing, stagecoaching, prisons, illustrators, adultery, boot-cleaning, fishing, law, homosexuality, clowns, gentlemen’s clubs, inns … all linked together but a plot of remarkable ingeniousness and featuring some of the most delightful, wicked, funny, frightening, obsessive characters you could ever hope to meet.

At its heart is the story of Robert Seymour. Jarvis reveals in minute detail how the young Dickens expropriated Seymour’s original idea and then rewrote history in his Preface to the first book edition.