Talk:The Pickwick Papers

Untitled
How did it come to be known as The Pickwick Papers? Often it's understandable that titles get shortened (Robinson Crusoe for example), but the alliteration of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is memorable and trips off the tongue rather nicely. And The Pickwick Papers is just such a boring title, really. When in its publishing history did it get saddled with the dull short title instead of the interesting longer one? --Bonalaw 12:14, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Is a list of every chapter in the book totally necessary? It seems like overkill. 68.1.98.64 03:34, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

This was *not* an idea from Seymour in any form!
I have a copy of the Pickwick Papers from the early 1900's. It is not dated in any way, but is published by DeWolfe, Fiske & Co. from Boston and is illustrated by F. Barnard. The book has a preface written by Dickens for which the primary purpose is to refute the common belief that Seymour had anything to do with the idea. Dickens was approached to write a periodical for which Seymour was to only provide the illustrations. All of the input from the artist was in response to the words that had already been written. The preface stated "Mr. Seymour never originated or suggested an incident, a phrase, or a word to be found in this book. Mr. Seymour died when only twenty-four pages of this book were published, and when assuredly not forty-eight were written." It states that Dickens only met Seymour one time, and that was the night before he died. The preface goes on with several pages in this vein, describing the true origin of the novel. Dick Schneiders dickschnei@aol.com 68.102.254.3 21:35, 7 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Your entire statement is demonstrably incorrect. “The Pickwickians in Wardle’s Kitchen,” by Robert Seymour (illustrator), illustrates the episode given on page 50 of the original monthly issue. Considering he died 3 months earlier, Dickens statements; ("Mr. Seymour never originated or suggested an incident, a phrase, or a word to be found in this book. Mr. Seymour died when only twenty-four pages of this book were published, and when assuredly not forty-eight were written;" and that “All of the input from the artist was in response to the words that had already been written;” ) Were demonstrably untrue. “Mr. Dickens had published a falsehood of great gravity and magnitude, and which, had he been compelled to contradict, would have placed his character for truth, gratitude and humanity, in a very bad light (Ref: Mrs. Jane Seymour.) In short, Dickens lied. NB: This anomoly is historically referred to as: “The Seymour Controversy in Pickwick prefaces &c”Stephen2nd (talk) 18:25, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Mr Jingle
Editors here might want to contribute to this debate: Articles for deletion/Alfred Jingle Colin4C (talk) 10:11, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Grammatical Error
In the first paragraph (or at least the introduction segment of this article) you do not put a period after Mr. I have seen this mistake oddly enough in a few other Wikipedia articles and am wondering whether or not there is some sort of special reason for this or if someone is purposely removing the Mr period from these articles. Could you please give me some insight on this matter.-James Pandora Adams —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.176.143.14 (talk) 04:04, 10 April 2011 (UTC)


 * From Mr.: 'In writing, "mister" is almost always contracted "Mr." or "Mr" when used with the person's name. Similarly to many contractions of titles, in the United States, Canada and South Africa, a period (full stop or full point) follows the abbreviated form, while in most Commonwealth countries the period is not used.'
 * So this is normal British English usage, not a grammatical error. Fowler suggests using a period when the abbreviation is a truncation, and not when intervening letters are omitted to form the abbreviation (in this case the 'iste' of 'Mister'). Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  10:38, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Hablot Knight Browne images
I have replaced the rather washed low resolution images with 8-bit grayscales from the 1st edition I prepared for the Wiksource text. The new ones are higher resolution and have a better tonal range and I think are an improvement. But they do come from severely toned images and other editors might not agree they are better.

By all means replace them with the old ones if so, but I found the old ones so washed out ye cleaning as to be scarcely worth having and very unnattractive becuse of it. I would rather have a few blemishes in a tonally rich image. TheCircleSquared (talk) 13:42, 19 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Me too, Squared, as an higher resolution is necessary (naturally OR as often the case) to clear up points of confusion. It seems that there is a practice of statements written purposely ambiguous with the intention that  false alternative interpretations will be the meaning to readers not in the loop. Such statements are not the practice of honesty and do not communicate the truth within any scope. It's higher resolutions that allow readers to see that the book published was evidently edited under the pen name Boz, which reveals a slightly different message than authored.-Dirtclustit (talk) 21:03, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

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