Dickensians and Death and Mr Pickwick

Dear Editor,

In 1936, at the Pickwick centenary service in Westminster Abbey, the Canon of Westminster said: "Pickwick is not a novel, but a universe." This is my all-time favorite statement about Pickwick and I think it provides the key to explaining why, for many years, The Pickwick Papers was acclaimed as Dickens's masterpiece, for instance in the London Times obituary in 1870. Dickens may have improved technically as a writer after Pickwick, but none of his later works have Pickwick's vastness. Related to this Pickwick-as-universe idea is something that Robert Seymour's son expresses in Death and Mr Pickwick: "Most books are, simply, books. Not Pickwick." The point is that the pleasures of Pickwick do not end when you reach the last page. "It is as though it is always a seed," continues Seymour's son, "and something will grow from it."

I wanted the universe-like quality of Pickwick for Death and Mr Pickwick and the strongest indication that I have achieved my objective comes from the Death and Mr Pickwick facebook page, <www.facebook.com/deathandmrpickwick>. If we consider the page to be a Dickensian group, with contributions by myself and others, then it is the most productive Dickensian group by far. There are never fewer than two posts a day, and often three or more, so the page has an output approaching a thousand posts a year. That productivity shows no signs of declining. Moreover, the posts are not intended to be ephemeral, throwaway things in the manner of most social media activity. I am collecting all the posts into a gigantic e-flipbook, forming a kind of "online museum" of Pickwickiana and Death-and-Mr-Pickwickiana. Fourteen volumes of the posts are available already, and can be accessed at the "Further Reading" tab at <www.deathandmrpickwick.com>. Work on my next novel has led to a temporary suspension of the flipbook, but as soon as the novel is finished I will resume the flipbooks. Posts, I should explain, are simply facebook posts, but my longer-term ambition is to create an online journal or magazine, The Journal of Death and Mr Pickwick Studies, to allow for in-depth exploration of topics.

It is abundantly clear to me that there is enormous scope for others to become involved in the Death and Mr Pickwick universe. For many years, I used to write about unusual hobbies for the Daily Telegraph and other publications. Two compilations of these articles were published in 1993 and 1998. Knowing something about hobbies, I can say that few have as much to offer as Death and Mr Pickwick. The Pickwick Papers was a huge social phenomenon, and exploring the causes and effects of that phenomenon offers extraordinary possibilities for excursions, collecting, historical research, book reviews and of course plenty of Pickwickian eating and drinking! There could also be opportunities for fanfic, model-making and original art. I can easily imagine a Death and Mr Pickwick convention taking place in a few years–including a costume parade!

I would also say that, every week, the facebook page features things which could be followed up, and explored in depth. For instance, I discovered recently that there was a Pickwick regiment in the American Civil War. What did they do? This could make a fascinating article. Or take the case of the man who appears in Death and Mr Pickwick as the saviour of The Pickwick Papers, Thomas Naylor Morton. He is buried in Liverpool, but what else can we find out about him?

Some people may get the feeling that, if they are not in academic life, there is little they can contribute to Dickensian understanding. But that is certainly not true of Death and Mr Pickwick. Opportunities abound for people to make their mark. The point I wish to make, though, is that the page has important things to offer academics too.

For instance, when Death and Mr Pickwick first appeared in 2015 there were some non-academic Dickensians who made ill-informed statements about my novel. It was asserted, for instance, regarding the fraud that...