The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens is set in England in the mid-nineteenth century. It features the protagonist Mr. Samuel Pickwick, a retired gentleman living in London, who forms a traveller’s club to document the experiences of travelling. Mr. Pickwick proposes that he and three members named Mr. Nathaniel Winkle, Mr. Augustus Snodgrass and Mr. Tracy Tupman travel to the beautiful English countryside. The novel begins with a description of how the Pickwick Club is formed. After an eventful journey the Pickwickians reach their first stop which is Rochester where the villain Alfred Jingle gets them into trouble.
The novel is a comic presentation of leisurely life in Victorian England. The Pickwickians have many adventures and during their travels Mr. Winkle meets and falls in love with a lady named Arabella and they get married. At the end of the novel the Pickwick club disbands because its founder Mr. Pickwick decides to retire to the calm and lovely neighbourhood called Dulwich near London. Dicken’s humourous novel provides light entertainment in the form of fiction.
Reviewed by Hannah George