78. The " Posthumous Papers " Of " The Pickwick Club. " By Charles Dickens. " With " Forty-three illustrations by R. Seymour and " Phiz. " London: " Chapman and Hall, 186, Strand. " MDCCCXXXVII.

An advertisement in the Times for March 26, 1836, reads:

"THE PICKWICK PAPERS.—On the 31st of March will be published, to be continued monthly, price One Shilling, the first number of the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, containing a faithful record of the Perambulations, Perils, Travels, Adventures, and Sporting Transactions of the Corresponding Members. Edited by Boz. Each monthly Part embellished with four Illustrations by Seymour. Chapman & Hall, 186 Strand, and of all booksellers."

Robert Seymour, a caricaturist, and the illustrator of such works as The Odd Volume, The Looking Glass, and Humorous Sketches, had been employed by Chapman and Hall to illustrate a comic publication called The Squib Annual; and this led him to suggest that he should make a series of Cockney sporting plates which could be furnished with letter-press. Hall applied to Dickens, then an unknown newspaper man, for the text, a "something which should be a vehicle for certain plates to be executed by Mr. Seymour." Dickens says of this proposition: "I objected.... My views being deferred to, I thought of Mr. Pickwick, and wrote the first number; from the proof-sheets of which Mr. Seymour made his drawing of the Club and his happy portrait of its founder. I connected Mr. Pickwick with a club, because of the original suggestion; and I put in Mr. Winkle expressly for the use of Mr. Seymour."

The work came out in twenty parts (parts nineteen and twenty were bound together), beginning in April, 1836, and ending with November, 1837. They were covered in light green paper bordered with a design by Seymour, and engraved by John Jackson, a pupil of Bewick and Hervey. The title reads, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club [Five lines] Edited by "Boz. With Illustrations ..."

The publication of the second number was delayed by the suicide of Seymour, whose mind gave way from overwork. This sad event was announced to the public in a note, and an apology was offered for the reduction of the number of plates from four to three. "When we state that they comprise Mr. Seymour's last efforts, and that on one of them, in particular (the embellishment of the Stroller's Tale), he was engaged up to a late hour of the night preceding his death, we feel confident that the excuse will be deemed a sufficient one."

The third and succeeding numbers contained two plates each. Those in the third part were originally executed by Robert Buss, who learned to etch in order to produce them. But he gave up the work, and his plates were replaced in later issues by others by Hablot K. Browne, or "Phiz," who did the remaining plates. The last or double part contained three plates and an engraved title-page. With it subscribers received also the printed title-page, dedication, preface, contents, Directions to the Binder and Table of Errata.

In the eighteenth number, dated September 29, 1837, the following important announcement appears:

"The subscribers to this work and the trade are respectfully informed that Nos. XIX. and XX. (with titles, contents, &c.) will be published together on 1^st of November; and that the complete volume, neatly bound in cloth, price one guinea, will be ready for delivery by the 14^th of that month, and for which country producers are requested to send early orders to their respective agents."

The venture was almost a failure at first, and it was not until the appearance of Sam Weller, with the fifth number, that the bookbinder, who had prepared four hundred copies of the first number, was obliged to increase the supply. From this time on, the demand grew until the enormous output of forty thousand was reached with the fifteenth number.

There are differences in the various accounts of the amount Dickens was to receive for his work. A letter from the publishers to him mentions their terms as nine guineas a sheet for each part consisting of a sheet and a half; fifteen guineas a number was the sum as stated by Mr. Edward Chapman to Mr. Forster; and Dickens himself, in a letter to Miss Hogarth, afterwards his wife, says, fourteen pounds a month. During publication, he received in checks from the publishers £3000. In 1837 Chapman & Hall agreed that after five years he should have a share in the copyright, on consideration that he write a similar book for which he was to receive £3000, besides having the whole copyright after five years. Forster thinks the author received, in all, £25,000, while the publishers' profits during the three years from 1836 to 1839 are said to have amounted to £14,000 on the sale of the work in numbers alone.

Chapman & Hall issued the book in volume form in 1837, at twenty-one shillings.

Mr. Frederic G. Kitton says:

"There are probably not more than a dozen copies of the first edition of "Pickwick" in existence. An examination of a number of impressions presumably of this edition results in the discovery of slight variations both in plates and text. These are especially noticeable in the illustrations, for, owing to the enormous demand, the plates were re-etched directly they showed signs of deterioration in the printing, and "Phiz," in reproducing his designs, sometimes altered them slightly. The earliest impressions of the work may be distinguished by the absence of engraved titles on the plates, and by their containing the original etchings by Seymour and Buss, not "Phiz's" replicas of them."

Octavo.

Collation: xiv pp., 1 l., 609 pp. Forty-five plates, including engraved title-page.