The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

First issued in 1836-37, this comic novel follows Samuel Pickwick and fellow members of his club as they leave London to report on English life. Their coach journeys take them to Rochester, Eatanswill, Bath, and a debtors' prison, with the cockney servant Sam Weller joining the party. Episodes include a breach-of-promise suit brought by Mrs Bardell, electioneering, hunting mishaps, and interpolated tales. There is little single intrigue: the book is a string of adventures and character sketches. It is a picaresque club novel of early Victorian travel and manners, not a detective story.

Bound in cream cloth printed with a montage of Keeping’s illustrations from the text, with dark red spine-label. Dark red endleaves. Dark red slipcase, with Dickens’s signature in gold.