The Pickwick Papers

The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club.

Episodic picaresque — club excursions, election farce, Bardell breach-of-promise trial, Fleet Prison, hunting and Christmas stories — loose sequential comedy rather than unified arc; Sam Weller's arrival in Ch.X links episodes into companionship narrative, so plot scores 85.

'Jingle,' said that versatile gentleman, taking the hint at once. 'Jingle--Alfred Jingle, Esq., of No Hall, Nowhere.'

Mr. Pickwick the benevolent innocent, Sam Weller the cockney philosopher, Mr. Jingle the strolling vagabond, Mrs. Bardell the landlady, Tracy Tupman the fat amorist — Dickens's first great ensemble and the birth of Sam Weller as national hero, so cast scores 94.

In a lofty room, ill-lighted and worse ventilated, situated in Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, there sit nearly the whole year round, one, two, three, or four gentlemen in wigs, as the case may be, with little writing-desks before them.

Magazine-serial episodic tempo — each chapter a set-piece (election, trial, prison, Christmas at Dingley Dell) — rarely flags because comedy resets energy; the Fleet Prison chapters deepen without killing momentum, so pace scores 87.

'That's the pint, sir,' interposed Sam; 'out vith it, as the father said to his child, when he swallowed a farden.'

Early Dickens at his most exuberant — Sam's 'vith all modesty' dialect, the trial transcripts, Jingle's staccato lies, the Goblin story inset — prose still finding its range but already unmatched for comic vitality, so prose scores 90.

In a lofty room, ill-lighted and worse ventilated, situated in Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, there sit nearly the whole year round, one, two, three, or four gentlemen in wigs, as the case may be, with little writing-desks before them.

Rochester, Ipswich, Eatanswill election, the Fleet Prison, Dingley Dell Christmas, Gad's Hill — provincial and metropolitan England as playground for benevolent adventure; the coaching-inn network as narrative highway, so world scores 88.

The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club.

Ch.I — the Pickwick Club's founding and the promise of field reports — establishes the club's comic charter; warm but less instantly gripping than later Dickens openings, so hook scores 86.

'May 12, 1827. Joseph Smiggers, Esq., P.V.P.M.P.C. [Perpetual Vice-President--Member Pickwick Club], presiding. The following resolutions unanimously agreed to:--

Invented the serial comic novel as national entertainment, Sam Weller as the first Dickensian servant-philosopher, the trial as set-piece — template for Wodehouse club comedies and all episodic British humour, so innov scores 89.

CHAPTER LVII. IN WHICH THE PICKWICK CLUB IS FINALLY DISSOLVED, AND EVERYTHING CONCLUDED TO THE SATISFACTION OF EVERYBODY

Club dissolved, all reconciled — 'EVERYTHING CONCLUDED TO THE SATISFACTION OF EVERYBODY' — structurally tidy but episodic form means less cumulative emotional weight than the mature novels, so ending scores 84.