#150 in Adventure
The Pickwick Papers
- 759
- Pages
- about 14 h
- Reading time
- Film 1952 +4
- On screen
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Our view
“The Pickwick Papers” is Dickens at his most high-spirited: a comic, episodic chronicle of Mr Pickwick and his friends. His first novel began as text to accompany a series of humorous sporting illustrations and grew into a publishing sensation. Some readers laugh aloud at its upbeat tone once they settle into the format; others find the characters grating and the situations absurd. At over seven hundred and fifty pages, it is best taken in instalments.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club was the first novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published in serial form from March 1836 to November 1837. Because of his success with Sketches by Boz published in 1836, Dickens was asked by the publisher Chapman & Hall to supply descriptions to explain a series of comic "cockney sporting plates" by illustrator Robert Seymour, and to connect them into a novel. The book became a publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books, and other merchandise. On its cultural impact, Nicholas Dames in The Atlantic writes, "'Literature' is not a big enough category for Pickwick. It defined its own, a new one that we have learned to call 'entertainment'." Published in 19 issues over 20 months, the success of The Pickwick Papers popularised serialised fiction and cliffhanger endings.
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen 5 times — from 1913 to 1985.
- FilmThe Pickwick PapersIMDb
- FilmThe Adventures of Mr. PickwickIMDb
- Short filmThe Pickwick PapersIMDb
- FilmThe Pickwick PapersIMDb
- SeriesThe Pickwick PapersIMDb
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 6.9 across 63 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 30% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Adventure average of 7.8. That is how 7.5 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 6.3 | 6 | 10% |
| Hardcover | 6.9 | 57 | 91% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Pickwick Papers?
It has 759 pages — longer than 96% of the ranked books in Adventure.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Adventure — with scores between 7.2 and 7.8, closest to this book.
