Rating: 
Summary: Hilarious, delightful
Review: Charles Dickens wrote The Pickwick Papers in his early 20s, but the writing is first rate and as witty as any seasoned author could have done in his place! Like many of Dickens's works, Pickwick was published in monthly installments, or "numbers" as they were called then. Although Dickens originally intended to end the story at the twentieth number, the popularity of the series (and the resultant income) convinced Dickens to double the length to forty numbers. The end result is a large offering that'll take you a while to get through (~750 pages in the excellent Penguin edition, which I read).Despite its length, Pickwick never tries your patience. It's delightfully humorous from beginning to end. Samuel Pickwick is the bumbling, middle-aged, wealthy namesake of this novel. He's the leader of a small group of single men that gets into all sorts of mischief, both physical and social. Booze is rampant. Apparently liquor back then was much more a part of daily life than today; everywhere these guys go they party and get drunk. They get into trouble with the law, women, unsavory characters, and more. Characterization is superb. This is one of the few novels I've read for which I can actually say that I got to know the characters. In most books I've read, the characters remain two-dimensional and the plot is what carries the story. In Pickwick, the *characters* are the essence of the story and the novel wouldn't be memorable at all if a lesser author were attempting to breathe life into these people. The Penguin edition includes a decent collection of endnotes to help explain unfamiliar portions of the text. Nevertheless, there were still quite a few words and concepts peculiar to early 19th century England that I didn't grasp. This edition also has maps of southern England and a key to the specific locations that the Pickwickians visit. In addition, two appendices reprint some of the announcements and prefaces that Dickens wrote in relation to the work. Highly recommended, particularly if you enjoy classic literature! Dickens's later works overshadow this gem due to their maturity, but Pickwick beats them all in enthusiasm, humor, and wit.
Rating:
Summary: Dickens's most light-hearted novel
Review: Charles Dickens's first novel, Pickwick Papers follows the adventures of the Pickwick Club as they involve themselves in comic mishaps and misunderstandings. His travels as a newspaper reporter acquainted Dickens with the coaches, coaching houses, and inns of England which he uses as settings in Pickwick Papers. Gradually he abandons the use of the club format and attempts to create a plot. Dickens's fame and popularity were forever established with the introduction of his greatest comic character, Sam Weller. In addition Pickwick Papers contains some of the author's best characters: Mr Pickwick, Dickens's most interesting title character; the strolling actor Jingle and his friend Job Trotter; Sam's father Tony Weller who battles with the red-nosed Rev Stiggins; and the Fat Boy. Memorable scenes include Christmas in the country, a Parliamentary election, and the famous court trial, which Dickens frequently recited on his reading tours.
Rating:
Summary: Watch out for the OXFORD EDITION
Review: Dickens' first novel, THE PICKWICK PAPERS, is as long and meandering as the Amazon River. But as with a trip up the Amazon, THE PICKWICK PAPERS will most likely leave you simultaneously weary to the bone, unprecedentedly enthused, and certain in some indefinable way that you'll always be richer for the experience.
The non-plot involves a strung together series of misadventures and humanistic serio-comic sketches of Mr. Pickwick, an aging but still vital retiree, and the young men who form the Pickwick Club, a sort of informal gentleman's club that wonders around England, getting its members in one improbable fix after another. Everyone should be so lucky as to have a Mr. Pickwick in their lives: an uncomplicatedly giving, decent, larger than life father figure who radiates bands of human warmth like a sun in evening clothes. It's an obvious pleasure for the Pickwickians to orbit around their benefactor and follow him wherever his undiminished sense of adventure leads.
THE PICKWICK PAPERS is an extremely satisfying read--in many way despite itself. It doesn't really go anywhere, and it doesn't presume to critique the human condition in a profound manner, but the sheer looseness and easy-goingness of it all proves itself in many places unexpectedly transcendent. Probably the best parts of the PICKWICK PAPERS are those that detail the friendship between the aging Mr. Pickwick and the his protege, Sam Weller, a young world-weary up-start who spits out pithy, telling one-liners like a roomful of Woody Allen imposters trying to prove who's the real deal. Sometimes the most satisfying art is the kind that takes you by the hand and walks you down this way a little ways and over that way some, and doesn't lead on that you're going anywhere or doing much of anything important, and leaves you sort of surprised by the depth of the experience you've just had.
Rating:
Summary: Masterful reading by Scofield
Review: Having known Scofield chiefly for his terrifying performance as King Lear in the Peter Brook film, it was a pleasant surprise to hear his mastery of comedy in this utterly delightful recording of excerpts from "The Pickwick Papers". (Although the broad outline of the plot is here from beginning to end, far too much material has been omitted to call it a simple abridgement.) Employing a full spectrum of tones and accents, he brings Dickens' colorful gallery of characters to vivid life. An outstanding audio presentation!
Rating:
Summary: The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
Review: I don't think I've ever read a novel half as entertaining as The Pickwick Papers. I agree with the reviewer who said that it was as if Dickens had a million jokes that he wanted to get off of his chest. And such wonderful characters! The last part of the book though is more about Mr. Pickwick himself than about the club. He also becomes less of a doofus and more of a lovealbe and sympathetic character as the novel progresses. If you are ever down and feeling depressed then this is the book to read.Sam Weller is one of Dickens greatest characters, the book really comes into its own when he becomes Mr.Pickwicks servent.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful and Most Fun
Review: I just finished my second reading of it.
I really cannot add much to the great reviews already written. I've always loved Dickens' way with words, and this book is a treasure in that department. The English, the Era, the characters, the countryside.... it got to the point where I couldn't wait for the evening to come so I could continue reading.
This also seems to me to be an important "cornerstone book" for other great English literature. The theme (though just a seed) for Scrooge in A Christmas Carol begins here, in a story called The Goblin Who Stole a Sexton, a story related during one of Pickwick's Christmastime visits to a friend in the country. When reading The Wind in the Willows or Tolkien's works, I cannot escape the feeling that they were also influenced by the charm, the sense of humor (okay, humour), duty to friends, and the simple but most important things in life which Dickens so impressively describes.
The only negative thing is that I discovered that it had an effect on me which made me wish that I was free from the drudgery of daily work, was retired (with ample monetary means, of course, like Pickwick himself), and could devote the remainder of my life to similar ramblings, adventures, and pursuits.
An excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Dickens with a sense of humor
Review: In college, I took a Dickens class. We read about a book a week. Needless to say I didn't get around to Bleak House. But I read Pickwick Papers, mainly because I was amazed at how funny it was. Dickens rivals Twain in his biting sarcasm and humor aimed late 19th Century society: The usual cast of slimebags appear; the criminal system, petty thieves, and lawyers, just to name a few. This book is a delight, and not all that laborious. It takes on all the political issues of other books, and leaves you with characters that are very real yet utterly fictitious; and since it was written in serial format originally; one can't wait to find out what happens next to these sheltered, naive, silly aristocratic characters who surely must have influenced Monty Python's Twit of the Year competition. Except Mr. Pickwick; the dignified President of the Pickwick Society. He's a twit, but one with moxy.
Rating:
Summary: A Jovial Lighthearted Romp
Review: Pickwick Papers is a wonderful book, and no doubt much has been written about it in academic and literary circles. But from a layman's perspective, it is simply a fun read. One would almost think it the work of a great master approaching the end of a career, consciously deciding to lay down the heartache of Great Expectations or the martyrdom of A Tale of Two Cities to take a jovial and whimsical jaunt through the English language and the realm of imagination. Yet the bumbling and somehow delightful misadventures of the Pickwickians fall at the beginning of Dickens' career. Comic relief is offered well before Hard Times sets in. Take an independently wealthy, magnanimous old fellow and surround him with a group of close friends. Send them together on a journey of desire to explore the world about them, meet new people, and experience the fullness of life, and you essentially have the plot of Pickwick Papers. The plethora of characters Dickens introduces along the way add considerable color to the narrative, not only because they come from such a vast array of backgrounds, but because they themselves are colorful in their own right: The first and most obvious example might be that of Mr. Alfred Jingle, the loquacious vagabond rapscallion who rescues the Pickwickians from an altercation with a feisty coach driver. One of Mr. Pickwicks cohorts, Mr. Snodgrass, receives a blow to the eye during the incident, after which Mr. Jingle is pleased to suggest the most efficacious remedies: "Glasses round-brandy and water, hot and strong, and sweet, and plenty-eye damaged, sir? Waiter! Raw beef-steak for the gentleman's eye-nothing like raw beef-steak for a bruise, sir; cold lamp-post very good, but lamp-post inconvenient-damned odd, standing in the open street half an hour with your eye against a lamp-post-eh-very good-ha! ha!" While Pickwick reads the legend of Prince Bladud by candlelight, we find this description of King Hudibras: "A great many centuries since, there flourished, in great state, the famous and renowned Lud Hudibras, king of Britain. He was a mighty monarch. The earth shook when he walked-he was so very stout. His people basked in the light of his countenance-it was so red and glowing. He was, indeed, every inch a king. And there were a good many inches of him too, for although he was not very tall, he was a remarkable size round, and the inches that he wanted in height he made up in circumference." The young surgeon, Benjamin Allen, is described as "a coarse, stout, thick-set young man, with black hair cut rather short and a white face cut rather long [...] He presented altogether, rather a mildewy appearance, and emitted a fragrant odour of full-flavoured Cubas." Dickens notes that the casual visitor to the Insolvent Court "might suppose this place to be a temple dedicated to the Genius of Seediness" and whose vapors are "like those of a fungus pit." Seated in this luxuriant ambience, we find an attorney, Mr. Solomon Pell, who "was a fat, flabby pale man, in a surtout which looked green one minute and brown the next, with a velvet collar of the same chameleon tints. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature, indignant with the propensities she observed in him in his birth, had given it an angry tweak which it had never recovered." A final sample from a list of worthy characters too long to mention might be Mr. Smangle, the boisterous whiskered man whom Pickwick encounters in debtors prison: "This last man was an admirable specimen of a class of gentry which never can be seen in full perfection but in such places; they may be met with, in an imperfect state, occasionally about the stable-yards and public-houses; but they never attain their full bloom except in these hot-beds, which would almost seem to be considerately provided by the legislature for the sole purpose of rearing them [...] There was a rakish vagabond smartness and a kind of boastful rascality about the whole man that was worth a mine of gold." The book itself is a goldmine full of textures, personas, venues, and idiosyncrasies of a bygone age. These are delight to behold, as the reader is thus invited to enjoy experience and descriptive beauty for their own sakes. Plot largely takes a backseat to the development of relationships, which can be seen as a myriad of subplots contributing to a never-ending story. Numerous vignettes which are incidental to the narrative add another level of richness, and it seems clear that Dickens offers them for an enjoyment all their own. There is something of "l'art pour l'art" throughout the whole work which expresses a love of language and a love of human nature. As Dickens might have summed it up, "All this was very snug and pleasant."
Rating:
Summary: A Jovial Lighthearted Romp
Review: Pickwick Papers is a wonderful book, and no doubt much has been written about it in academic and literary circles. But from a layman's perspective, it is simply a fun read. One would almost think it the work of a great master approaching the end of a career, consciously deciding to lay down the heartache of Great Expectations or the martyrdom of A Tale of Two Cities to take a jovial and whimsical jaunt through the English language and the realm of imagination. Yet the bumbling and somehow delightful misadventures of the Pickwickians fall at the beginning of Dickens' career. Comic relief is offered well before Hard Times sets in. Take an independently wealthy, magnanimous old fellow and surround him with a group of close friends. Send them together on a journey of desire to explore the world about them, meet new people, and experience the fullness of life, and you essentially have the plot of Pickwick Papers. The plethora of characters Dickens introduces along the way add considerable color to the narrative, not only because they come from such a vast array of backgrounds, but because they themselves are colorful in their own right: The first and most obvious example might be that of Mr. Alfred Jingle, the loquacious vagabond rapscallion who rescues the Pickwickians from an altercation with a feisty coach driver. One of Mr. Pickwicks cohorts, Mr. Snodgrass, receives a blow to the eye during the incident, after which Mr. Jingle is pleased to suggest the most efficacious remedies: "Glasses round-brandy and water, hot and strong, and sweet, and plenty-eye damaged, sir? Waiter! Raw beef-steak for the gentleman's eye-nothing like raw beef-steak for a bruise, sir; cold lamp-post very good, but lamp-post inconvenient-damned odd, standing in the open street half an hour with your eye against a lamp-post-eh-very good-ha! ha!" While Pickwick reads the legend of Prince Bladud by candlelight, we find this description of King Hudibras: "A great many centuries since, there flourished, in great state, the famous and renowned Lud Hudibras, king of Britain. He was a mighty monarch. The earth shook when he walked-he was so very stout. His people basked in the light of his countenance-it was so red and glowing. He was, indeed, every inch a king. And there were a good many inches of him too, for although he was not very tall, he was a remarkable size round, and the inches that he wanted in height he made up in circumference." The young surgeon, Benjamin Allen, is described as "a coarse, stout, thick-set young man, with black hair cut rather short and a white face cut rather long [...] He presented altogether, rather a mildewy appearance, and emitted a fragrant odour of full-flavoured Cubas." Dickens notes that the casual visitor to the Insolvent Court "might suppose this place to be a temple dedicated to the Genius of Seediness" and whose vapors are "like those of a fungus pit." Seated in this luxuriant ambience, we find an attorney, Mr. Solomon Pell, who "was a fat, flabby pale man, in a surtout which looked green one minute and brown the next, with a velvet collar of the same chameleon tints. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature, indignant with the propensities she observed in him in his birth, had given it an angry tweak which it had never recovered." A final sample from a list of worthy characters too long to mention might be Mr. Smangle, the boisterous whiskered man whom Pickwick encounters in debtors prison: "This last man was an admirable specimen of a class of gentry which never can be seen in full perfection but in such places; they may be met with, in an imperfect state, occasionally about the stable-yards and public-houses; but they never attain their full bloom except in these hot-beds, which would almost seem to be considerately provided by the legislature for the sole purpose of rearing them [...] There was a rakish vagabond smartness and a kind of boastful rascality about the whole man that was worth a mine of gold." The book itself is a goldmine full of textures, personas, venues, and idiosyncrasies of a bygone age. These are delight to behold, as the reader is thus invited to enjoy experience and descriptive beauty for their own sakes. Plot largely takes a backseat to the development of relationships, which can be seen as a myriad of subplots contributing to a never-ending story. Numerous vignettes which are incidental to the narrative add another level of richness, and it seems clear that Dickens offers them for an enjoyment all their own. There is something of "l'art pour l'art" throughout the whole work which expresses a love of language and a love of human nature. As Dickens might have summed it up, "All this was very snug and pleasant."
Rating: 
Summary: Pickwick Papers is an amusing read
Review: The classic novel the Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens, is a very enchanting and witty novel. It is full of quirky and fun characters such as Mr. Pickwick himself, the constant gentleman and "hero" of the novel, and his jovial manservant Sam Weller, an amusing definition of a devoted friend. Dickens does an excellent job of keeping the reader entertained with these eccentric characters through their many adventures and escapades.
This book is great for anyone who loves Charles Dickens' literature because it shows a more comical side to his writing yet still keeps his classic style. This book is not for those looking for a quick read. Dickens is very verbose and elaborate in his detailing of every single aspect of the book, from the characters to the scenery. This aspect slows the pace a little, so the reader must be at full attention at all times. When that attention is given however, the reader becomes enthralled with clever witticisms to make anyone laugh out loud as well as intricate detailing in both setting and character that can make them feel like an intimate friend of Mr. Pickwick as they are sitting in a perfectly portrayed setting. Dickens' sense of humor shines through Pickwick Papers through many of these situations with his mischievous use of satire. Dickens' takes a playful aim at many subjects such as the antics of politics, the absurdity of law, and the general folly of the human race. These features make the book an interesting and amusing read because Dickens uses his comedy to poke fun and completely entertains the reader simultaneously. Overall, Pickwick Papers is a brilliantly written book that is sure to entertain any who take the time and effort to read it.
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