There's lots of energy, partying and travel, and not so much of the simmering anger about social injustices that fuel Dickens' later works (although there is still some). It turns out to be the very best of Victorian fun. I chose this book for my nineteenth century classic because the March sisters in 'Little Women' valued it highly, as did Anne of Green Gables and her friends. They're joined by Samuel Weller, a sharp-witted and cheery young Cockney who becomes Mr Pickwick's man servant. There's Mr Tracy Tupman, a chubby, middle-aged man who loves pretty ladies Augustus Snodgrass, who fancies himself a poet, although we never see any of his poetry and Nathaniel Winkle, a young man who wants to give the impression that he's a terrific sportsman, although his bluffing often endangers lives. He and three followers decide to journey to remote towns from London to record their observations.

Mr Pickwick is the kindly, middle-aged leader of a gentlemen's club that bears his name. Since this book was just shy of 900 pages, there's so much to say, which I'll try to condense. This is my choice in the 2017 Back to the Classics challenge for a nineteenth century classic.

From the hallowed turf of Dingley Dell Cricket Club to the unholy fracas of the Eatanswill election, via the Fleet debtor’s prison, characters & incidents sprang to life from Dickens’s pen, to form an enduringly popular work of ebullient humour & literary invention. Readers were captivated by the adventures of the poet Snodgrass, the lover Tupman, the sportsman Winkle &, above all, by that quintessentially English Quixote, Mr Pickwick, & his cockney Sancho Panza, Sam Weller. Few first novels have created as much popular excitement as The Pickwick Papers–-a comic masterpiece that catapulted its 24-year-old author to immediate fame.

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens