Dickens's first novel, a comic adventure published in monthly parts. Mr Samuel Pickwick, a kindly and rather innocent gentleman, founds a club and sets out with three friends to travel the English countryside and report on what they find. They meet coaches, inns, elections, rogues and a lawsuit. The arrival of Pickwick's cockney servant Sam Weller made the book a sensation. It is loosely plotted, full of humour and good spirits, and launched Dickens's fame.
Quotes
Anythin' for a quiet life, as the man said wen he took the sitivation at the lighthouse.
There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.
Battledore and shuttlecock’s a wery good game, vhen you ain’t the shuttlecock and two lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too excitin’ to be pleasant.
He had used the word in its Pickwickian sense.