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Dickensian Intemperance: Charity and Reform

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From: Novel
Date: 20031001
Author:Claybaugh, Amanda

Wildly popular in its own day, The Pickwick Papers (1836-37) is now best known for having inaugurated the Victorian novel. Written in the fallow period following the death of Sir Walter Scott, it entered a literary field divided into minor sub-genres and emerged as the model of what all novels should be. Before Pickwick, there were Irish novels, silver-spoon novels, and Newgate novels, among others.1 After Pickwick, and because of its example, novels tended to take a single form: often illustrated, often serialized, invariably realist, and almost always socially engaged. But Pickwick was, I ...

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