THE PICKWICK PAPERS ON CINEMA AND TV
THE PICKWICK PAPERS ORIGINATED AS A “TRANSLATION” OF ILLUSTRATIONS INTO
NARRATIONS, OF IMAGES INTO WORDS. DICKENS WAS COMMISSIONED TO WRITE
THE BOOK BY HIS PUBLISHER CHAPMAN AND HALL, WHO ORIGINALLY WANTED
DICKENS TO MERELY PROVIDE THE TEXT TO COMPLEMENT ILLUSTRATIONS BY
ROBERT SEYMOUR, WHO HAD PROPOSED TO DRAW A SERIES OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SURROUNDING THE COMIC ADVENTURES OF THE MEMBERS OF A SPORTING CLUB.
As the words and narrations by Dickens increased, Dickens’s and Seymour’s
roles were inverted: Robert Seymour was relegated to a secondary role, and
now instead of Dickens providing the text to illustrations created by Seymour,
Seymour was required to illustrate Dickens’s writing. Only part way through the
publication of the book, Seymour – who suffered from depression – committed
suicide. After the suicide of the artist, the latter was replaced by Robert William
Buss. However, Dickens did not like Buss’s work and so he was replaced in
turn by Hablot Knight Browne (“Phiz”) for the fourth instalments. This was the
beginning of a very fruitful collaboration between “Phiz” and Dickens: “Phiz”
continued to work for the author for over 23 years, illustrating other novels such
as David Copperfield, and Bleak House.
The Pickwick Club is named after its founder and perpetual president Samuel
Pickwick. The aim of the club is to explore life and to this end, Pickwick and
the other members of the Club make journeys out of London to various parts of
England, meeting bizarre characters along the way.
1) “Samuel Pickwick” (an elderly man, portly and jovial, founder of the
Pickwick Club).
2) “Sam Weller” (an honest young man, with a Cockney great sense of
humour and a way of creating proverbs that came to be known as
“wellerisms”)
3) “Mr. Jingle” (the “villain” of the novel. A cheater and a former actor who
frequently deceives Mr. Pickwick and his friends. He has a particular way
of speaking and is finally imprisoned for his crimes).
Moreover, some critics suggested the influence of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don
Quixote (with Sam Weller reflecting Sancho Panza’s “popular realism” and
Samuel Pickwick identifying Don Quixote’s idealism).
