Death and Mr. Pickwick

Starred review from February 16, 2015
In this astounding first novel, Jarvis re-creates, in loving and exhaustive detail, the writing and publication of Charles Dickens’s first novel, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, in 1836. Written under the pen name Boz, Pickwick made Dickens perhaps the first literary celebrity. But who deserves credit for creating Pickwick, the book’s protagonist: Dickens, the man who created the text, or Robert Seymour, the caricaturist who came up with the name and the graphic image of the rotund Englishman? Jarvis is clearly on the side of Seymour—and the book offers an impressively imagined account of Seymour, Dickens, and a huge host of others (the sheer scale of the book is, itself, Dickensian). This picaresque novel is structured with a framing story—a conversation between a present-day narrator and a Mr. Imbelicate, who wants assistance in writing the results of his life’s research on Dickens’s “immortal book.” Jarvis depicts a world in which popular culture was starting to mesh with the earliest forms of mass communications (print, magazines, and books). He convinces readers that, in Seymour’s day, the image trumped the printed word, but Dickens and the wild success of Pickwick changed that. While Jarvis makes a powerful case for Seymour as the character’s creator, it seems undeniable that Dickens’s literary talents turned that creation into a phenomenon. The book is very long, and some may find some of its detours a bit wayward, but it is a staggering accomplishment, a panoramic perspective of 19th-century London and its creative class.

Starred review from May 15, 2015
Beguiling, entertaining novel of Dickensian England, cramming most of the island and its most interesting characters into 800 teeming pages. Did Charles Dickens come up with all those wonderful stories of his all by himself? Nay. Debut novelist Jarvis, a British journalist and adventurer, sets numerous Dickens-worthy tales into motion in one big book, some out of the mouths of beloved characters: "though even Moses Pickwick was not mad enough to tell the entire story of Prince Bladud to his horse, he did tell the story to one or two interested customers inside the Hare and Hounds." Storytelling-the exceedingly arcane tale of the prince among other set pieces, along with a few shaggier yarns and the straightforward exposition of the narrator nicknamed Scripty-is central to Jarvis' enterprise, but more so the teller of the tale, for among Dickens scholars there has long been controversy over authorship, a question that Jarvis complicates by placing Dickens' first illustrator, Robert Seymour, at the center of the story-and suggesting that Seymour deserves more credit than he gets. The story is the thing, though, even if Jarvis invites us not to believe all the stories we hear: "That story doesn't wash," says Seymour, while Dickens himself "committed certain deceptions which, so far, no one had noticed." Chalk it up to drink, perhaps, for the book is full of bibulousness as much as suspect tales ("his wooden legs wore out quickly when he drank gin and water," "There is one answer: gin, Mr Seymour, gin!"), the two connecting in the very name of the author in dispute: " 'Boz' is the biggest joke of all. Pickwick is written by a genius called Booze." But there's more to it than the sauce; in the end, this lavish story is a celebration of art and conviviality. Dickens himself would be proud of Jarvis' capture of so huge a slice of life. Humane and funny, though the Heditor might have taken a sterner hand here and there.

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Starred review from April 15, 2015
Here is a huge and hugely impressive first novel for both fans of immersive reads and of Dickens' London. Jarvis here argues that the idea behind Dickens' serialized sketches, known as The Pickwick Papers, which launched the writer's career and made him wildly popular, did not, in fact, originate with him. Instead, it was illustrator Robert Seymour, given to mercurial moods and obsessive about his work, who originally thought up the character of the rotund, itinerant rum-hound. In making his case in exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) detail, Jarvis traces the origins of mass-market publishing, vividly depicting the sordid London neighborhoods of publishers who posted the popular work of caricaturists in their windows, drawing a rowdy and appreciative audience. Pictures held sway over words, and it took an ambitious and opportunistic Dickens to shift the scales, though he badly used people in the process. Readers don't have to buy Jarvis' argument to appreciate his teeming chronicle. Packed with interesting characters and tall tales, and ranging in setting from sporting clubs (read drinking clubs) to the theater to a factory floor to a debtors' prison, this is fiction writ large. Not all of the digressions that Jarvis embarks upon will be of equal interest to readers, but this is choice reading for fans of Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White (2002) and Dan Simmons' Drood (2009).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2015

As an Address to Readers notes, "This novel, based on the life of the artist Robert Seymour, the caricaturist behind Pickwick, and the extraordinary events surrounding the birth of Charles Dickens's first novel, departs from the accepted origin of Pickwick put forward by Dickens and his publisher, Edward Chapman.... The accepted origin is not true." At 800 pages, a truly Dickensian debut.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2015

Hired to research, edit, and write the "true story" of the creation of Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, Scripty, as he becomes known, is tasked with combing through a massive collection of diaries, letters, drawings, and memorabilia. His research begins with Robert Seymour, a draftsman and artist who eventually became a successful magazine caricaturist and whose every pencil mark, brushstroke, and etching is closely examined here. Scripty's investigations suggest that it was Seymour who developed the idea of the gullible and rotund Mr. Pickwick, a humorous fellow whose notebooks are filled with the tall tales told to him by frequenters of his club. Dickens is hired to provide the text accompanying Seymour's drawings, a version of events hotly disputed by Dickens himself, who contended that the idea of Pickwick was always his own. VERDICT The mystery at the heart of this debut novel--who dreamed up Pickwick?--takes some 800 pages to resolve. It starts slowly but gains a steady pulse once Dickens arrives on scene and truly catches fire with the publication of The Pickwick Papers, the first modern-day publishing phenomenon. Patient readers will be duly rewarded with an intriguing and lively story. [See Prepub Alert, 12/15/14.].--Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.