The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club…
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
London: Chapman & Hall, 1836-37
First edition
PR4569 A1 1836

With the publication of his first novel, the Pickwick Papers, twenty-five year old Charles Dickens became famous overnight. It was published in monthly parts and the author supplied the installments as they were needed. The humorous tale was so successful that the print run had to be increased from four hundred at first to forty thousand by the fifteenth part. “Phiz,” Hablot K. Browne (1815-1882), illustrated many British novels in the 1830’s and 1840’s. For the serialized edition of Dickens’ Posthumous Papers he made detailed and vivacious drawings of both comic and dramatic scenes in nos. IV-XX.