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  • Published: 15 August 2016
  • ISBN: 9780099593485
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 816
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

Death and Mr Pickwick



An extraordinary novel about an extraordinary novel – Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers

Shortlisted for the HWA Goldsboro Debut Crown

It is 31 March 1836. A new monthly periodical is launched entitled The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Conceived and created by the artist Robert Seymour, it contains four of his illustrations. The words to accompany them are written by a young journalist, under the pen-name Boz. The journalist's real name is Charles Dickens.

The Pickwick Papers soon becomes a phenomenal, unprecedented sensation, read and discussed by the entire British Isles. Before long, its success is worldwide.

Stephen Jarvis's novel tells of the dawning of the age of global celebrity. It is a story of colossal triumph and of the depths of tragedy, based on real events - and an expose of how an ambitious young writer stole another man's ideas.

  • Published: 15 August 2016
  • ISBN: 9780099593485
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 816
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

About the author

Stephen Jarvis

Stephen Jarvis was born in Essex. Death and Mr Pickwick is his first novel.

Praise for Death and Mr Pickwick

A huge and hugely impressive first novel for both fans of immersive reads and of Dickens’ London.

Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist

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...it is a staggering accomplishment, a panoramic perspective of nineteenth-century London and its creative class.

Publishers Weekly starred review

An impressive debut.

Frances Wilson, New Statesman

It offers a readers experience as immersive as Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, and as visionary in its capacity to connect us with past lives.

Lucasta Miller, Independent

Some may view this book as a remarkable piece of literary detection, others a dazzlingly written and superbly imagined exposition on how art and writing are gestated and born. Or both.

Daily Mail

A bravura exercise in fictionalized literary criticism.

DJ Taylor, Guardian

You’ll be reluctant to leave its rambunctious world of creative intrigue and betrayal.

Hephzibah Anderson, Mail on Sunday

Original and very enjoyable… The narrative may be complex but the reading experience is leisurely and pleasant.

Lindsay Duguid, The Times Literary Supplement

It’s a great, rich, swarming, seething broth of a story-behind-a story… You don’t need to be a Dickens nerd like me to be captivated by this epic of ambition and skullduggery.

Kate Saunders, Saga Magazine

An outstanding debut novel.

Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

This is a masterpiece of imagination supported by a mountain of research.

Christian House, 4 stars, Sunday Telegraph

Richly imaginative,… Jarvis’ first novel represents a major achievement.

Good Book Guide

Astpnishing

David Sexton, Evening Standard

A novel as crowded, rude and brilliantly inventive as the great pre-Dickensian caricatures it celebrates.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Observer

A book as crowded and rude and brilliantly inventive as the great pre-Dickensian caricatures it celebrates.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett, New Statesman

A vast, sprawling epic, packed with digression and detail, it is a brilliant achievement for a first-time novelist.

Nick Rennison, BBC History Magazine

The work of a genius

John Bird, Big Issue

Engrossing detail… Exuberantly broadens out from indictment to celebration… Teems with vividly idiosyncratic characters…. Burstingly informative and thronged with colorful characters, this panoramic novel about the shady start and sunny breakthrough of a literary phenomenon is a phenomenon itself.

Peter Kemp, Sunday Times