Word: pickwick
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Unmoved by Dickens' crocodile tears, Biographer Kingsmill applauds his comic vein to the echo, calls The Pickwick Papers "his greatest book and the finest example of comic impressionism in our literature." He sniffs at Dickens' "Bravery" in championing social reforms, says his dragons were papier-mâché bugaboos: "He was one of those reformers who attack with public opinion behind them, and are rewarded with an increase in their wealth and popularity. He was not one of those reformers . . . who run counter to public opinion and are put in prison and ruined." Kingsmill states his whole...
...Dickens. Publishers Chapman & Hall suggested Dickens write a series of humorous pieces about a club of Cockney sportsmen, to be illustrated by Artist Robert Seymour. After drawing seven pictures Seymour shot himself; Dickens got another'artist (Hablot K. Browne). With the publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837) Dickens' reputation was made. The book was translated into French and German. Winkle. Weller, jingle, Snodgrass became household words. London shops sold Pickwick chintzes, Pickwick cigars. Weller corduroys. Boz cabs jingled down the streets...
...newspapers on March 5, continue in 13 installments of a little more than 1,000 words each. Had he published The Life of Our Lord in 1849, Charles Dickens would have received no such handsome price for it. For his first story, published in 1833, he got nothing. For Pickwick Papers, he got ?15 an installment. His last book, Edwin Drood, brought the highest price Dickens ever received from a publisher: ?7,500 for the copyright, ?1,000 for the U. S. rights. A Christmas Carol was a financial disappointment. After two years, only two editions had been sold...
...maximum; suddenly a scream is heard, the butler staggers in, ghastly pale, and the curtain falls. The audience is left to wonder which of thirteen possible suspects, each with some betrayal of guilt, is the murderer. Derby Brown, in the part of the host, first a beaming Mr. Pickwick and then a leering Mephistopheles, does a rare bit of acting which alone makes the play worth seeing...
...Schools. Reported Harvard Professor Zechariah Chafee Jr.: "At present any allusion to science, literature or history is sure to be meaningless to at least half the college graduates in the room. An occasional call for a show of hands has revealed only a scattered few who had read Pickwick Papers. And the use of the relatives of Romeo & Juliet to clarify (supposedly) a complicated pedigree case led to an overheard conversation between two students: 'Who were these Montagues and Capulets, anyhow...