After a long break from literature, I returned to the good old classics - after a completely satisfying two weeks, I finished the Pickwick Papers - or, formally, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, today. This being the first true English language blockbuster in printing history, he will be a rare reader who can discern that Dickens was 24 when he wrote the first of his masterpieces.I remember trying to read this multiple times when I was very young - in my school days - but the work was too big for me back then. That remains true in some measure - This is not a work that has to be read letter by letter, but for most of its numerous pages makes you read it letter by letter.
An incident that occurred in India during the centenary celebrations of Dickens (around 1970) shows the immense popularity of this novel:
Sometime around 1970, marking the centenary of Dicken's death, a Dickens expert from UK visited many colleges in India, giving talks about the works of Dickens and their significance. When he asked about the most popular books by Dickens in these parts, response from the Botany Professor B.G.L. Swamy in the Presidency College of Madras (now Chennai) was this: (translated from Kannada, from his book 'Collegu Ranga') :
"There are many people who maintain a steady habit of reading English literature, both people who teach or study English everyday and make it part of their living, and those for whom English is just an optional pleasure. Many such people maintain their own personal libraries, according to their knowledge of English language. One work of Dickens that all such libraries have in common is the Pickwick Papers."
