The novel that invented modern popular fiction. Twenty-four-year-old Charles Dickens was asked to write captions for a series of comic sporting illustrations; instead, he created a universe. Samuel Pickwick, the rotund, unworldly founder of the Pickwick Club, decides that theory isn't enough - he must observe English life firsthand. Along with his devoted companions - the timid sportsman Winkle, the poet Snodgrass, and the lovelorn Tupman - he embarks on journeys across the English countryside that spiral from mild eccentricity into glorious chaos. But the real revelation is Sam Weller, Pickwick's sharp-tongued cockney manservant, who practically steals the entire novel with his wit, his proverbs, and his irrepressible good nature. From cricket matches to election riots to a stint in the Fleet debtors' prison, the adventures pile up with an energy that never flags. This is Dickens before the darkness - giddy, generous, and impossibly inventive. It made him famous overnight and popularized the serialized novel format we still read today.
