Death And Mr. Pickwick: A Novel

"The Pickwick Papers, serialized in 1836, made Charles Dickens — then writing under the pen name “Boz” — famous. The illustrator of the work was a then-well-known caricaturist named Robert Seymour. Stephen Jarvis’ debut novel dramatizes the origin story of The Pickwick Papers, bringing Dickens and Seymour alive in rollicking scenes of early 19th century England. Driving the narrative are the circumstances of Seymour’s spark of an idea for Pickwick, his shocking suicide and Dickens’ later claim of authorship. In the end, though, Jarvis’ arguments about who concocted the book seem less important than the Dickensian/Seymourian atmosphere he creates."