The Nexus Archive
English Novel · Novel
The Pickwick Papers
by Dickens · The Conscience of the City · Victorian England, 1812-1870
A comic traveling fellowship expands into a crowded England of stories, lawsuits, prisons, and loyalty.
- Advanced
- ~22 hr 15 min read
- 4 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the CHAPTER X. CLEARING UP ALL DOUBTS (IF ANY EXISTED) OF THE DISINTERESTEDNESS OF MR. A. JINGLE’S CHARACTER guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
Good Company
Samuel Pickwick sets out to observe the world with a notebook, three companions and an impressive confidence in his own judgment. The inns, coaches and country houses of England supply more knowledge than he bargained for. His friends bring ambitions in poetry, sport and romance; the people they meet have plans of their own.
Dickens’s first novel appeared in monthly parts in 1836–37, and its shape invites repeated departures. A comic encounter opens into a traveller’s tale, a ghost story or a memory of grief. The narrating editor handles the club’s records with enormous ceremony while its supposed experts expose themselves. Much of the comedy lies in the distance between a person’s claims and the scene around them.
A fine coat, a legal argument or a religious phrase can pass for virtue here. Pickwick’s readiness to trust makes him vulnerable to tricks, while loyalty asks more of him than good intentions. Amid the feasting and practical jokes, Dickens gives warmth and suffering equal claims on our attention: the pleasure of good company includes the question of whom it will stand by when circumstances change.
The opening pages
CHAPTER I. THE PICKWICKIANS
The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination, with which his search among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted.
‘May 12, 1827. Joseph Smiggers, Esq., P.V.P.M.P.C. [Perpetual Vice- President—Member Pickwick Club], presiding. The following resolutions unanimously agreed to:—
‘That this Association has heard read, with feelings of unmingled satisfaction, and unqualified approval, the paper communicated by Samuel Pickwick, Esq., G.C.M.P.C. [General Chairman—Member Pickwick Club], entitled “Speculations on the Source of the Hampstead Ponds, with some Observations on the Theory of Tittlebats;” and that this Association does hereby return its warmest thanks to the said Samuel Pickwick, Esq., G.C.M.P.C., for the same.
‘That while this Association is deeply sensible of the advantages which must accrue to the cause of science, from the production to which they have just adverted—no less than from the unwearied researches of Samuel Pickwick, Esq., G.C.M.P.C., in Hornsey, Highgate, Brixton, and Camberwell—they cannot but entertain a lively sense of the inestimable benefits which must inevitably result from carrying the speculations of that learned man into a wider field, from extending his travels, and, consequently, enlarging his sphere of observation, to the advancement of knowledge, and the diffusion of learning.
‘That, with the view just mentioned, this Association has taken into its serious consideration a proposal, emanating from the aforesaid, Samuel Pickwick, Esq., G.C.M.P.C., and three other Pickwickians hereinafter named, for forming a new branch of United Pickwickians, under the title of The Corresponding Society of the Pickwick Club.
‘That the said proposal has received the sanction and approval of this Association.
‘That the Corresponding Society of the Pickwick Club is therefore hereby constituted; and that Samuel Pickwick, Esq., G.C.M.P.C., Tracy Tupman, Esq., M.P.C., Augustus Snodgrass, Esq., M.P.C., and Nathaniel Winkle, Esq., M.P.C., are hereby nominated and appointed members of the same; and that they be requested to forward, from time to time, authenticated accounts of their journeys and investigations, of their observations of character and manners, and of the whole of their adventures, together with all tales and papers to which local scenery or associations may give rise, to the Pickwick Club, stationed in London.
Chapter guides · 4
CHAPTER X. CLEARING UP ALL DOUBTS (IF ANY EXISTED) OF THE DISINTERESTEDNESS OF MR. A. JINGLE’S CHARACTER
The Price of an Elopement
At the White Hart, Jingle’s marriage licence gives way to a cheque.
The boots know
Sam Weller, cleaning boots in the inn yard, knows the guests through the footwear they send down. Pickwick’s offer of half a guinea gets past the evasions that have frustrated Perker. Sam’s information brings the pursuers to Jingle and Rachael Wardle.
A bargain replaces a wedding
Rachael refuses to leave with her brother. Perker points out that she is an adult whose wishes cannot simply be overruled, then negotiates with Jingle. The price of abandoning the match is £120, paid by a cheque payable the day after tomorrow so that Rachael can be taken away first.
The departure
Jingle leaves the marriage licence for Tupman and taunts Pickwick on his way out. Pickwick throws an inkstand and tries to pursue him; Sam stops the chase. The party returns by the Muggleton coach the next day and reaches Dingley Dell after nightfall.
Knowledge at work
The men who own the boots depend on the man who cleans them. Jingle’s quickness secures his money, while Sam’s knowledge makes the pursuit possible. The apparent romance has become a transaction, and Rachael is brought sadly home to Dingley Dell.
CHAPTER XXI. IN WHICH THE OLD MAN LAUNCHES FORTH INTO HIS FAVOURITE THEME, AND RELATES A STORY ABOUT A QUEER CLIENT
Romance in the Law’s Rooms
Jack Bamber’s tavern tales turn legal chambers into scenes of loneliness and revenge.
The old rooms
Bamber finds horror in chambers that Pickwick has treated as curious old buildings: exhausted students, ruined hopes and deaths left undiscovered. His ghost story gives the pattern a comic turn when a poor tenant persuades the haunting spirit to find somewhere more pleasant.
Two fathers
In the longer tale, George Heyling loses his child and then his wife, Mary, during his confinement in the Marshalsea. Mary’s father has rejected them. Heyling’s own father dies before he can disinherit him, leaving him rich and free; his wife’s father, who put him in prison, becomes the object of his revenge.
Debt as a weapon
Heyling refuses to rescue the old man’s drowning son, then years later purchases the father’s debts and uses repeated legal proceedings to ruin him. He arranges the final arrest for the sixth anniversary of the son’s death. Before he can be carried off to prison, the old man is found lifeless. The attorney never learns what became of him.
Back at the Stump
Mary and her child lie together in a Kent churchyard. After finishing the tale, Bamber silently puts on his hat and coat and leaves. The other drinkers drop melted candle grease into a sleeping patron’s brandy-and-water; Pickwick pays his own and Sam’s reckoning and departs. Horror and ordinary amusement occupy the same evening.
CHAPTER XXXII. DESCRIBES, FAR MORE FULLY THAN THE COURT NEWSMAN EVER DID, A BACHELOR’S PARTY, GIVEN BY MR. BOB SAWYER AT HIS LODGINGS IN THE BOROUGH
Parties and Performances
Two gatherings expose the distance between their hosts’ dignity and their conduct.
CHAPTER XLIV. TREATS OF DIVERS LITTLE MATTERS WHICH OCCURRED IN THE FLEET, AND OF MR. WINKLE’S MYSTERIOUS BEHAVIOUR; AND SHOWS HOW THE POOR CHANCERY PRISONER OBTAINED HIS RELEASE AT LAST
Lives Behind the Walls
Pickwick and Sam encounter the people whom the prison holds after the visitors have gone.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read The Pickwick Papers?
- About 22 hr 15 min in total.
- How difficult is The Pickwick Papers?
- Advanced. A very long novel; about 22 hours of reading.
- Can I read The Pickwick Papers for free?
- The Pickwick Papers is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and two chapter guides on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 4 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Dickens
Charles Dickens was a Victorian novelist whose works explore class, poverty, childhood, debt, law, memory, and moral change.
“What does society do to the vulnerable, and who becomes responsible?”
Dickens shaped the modern social novel and gave popular fiction lasting moral force.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. The Pickwick Papers is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.