Author: Bos. [Prest, Thomas Peckett].
Title: THE PENNY PICKWICK.
Description: Edward Lloyd, N.d. c.[1837-8]. Issues 1-96 [only of 112 Issues in total]. 432pp. + 330pp. Each issue headed with a woodcut and with some textual woodcuts. Several issues with residue of original wrapps. along gutter hinge, upto pp. 68 with loss along upper portion of fore-edge, pp.299-302 ragged along fore-edge, without the original wrapps., some soiling and browning, rebound in modern crushed half brown morocco with marbled boards, worn original gilt lettered label to spine. ¶ An extremely rare piece of plagarism, rarely if ever found complete. Appearing weekly running to 112 issues, with the drop-head title The Penny Pickwick, it also appeared in two volumes. ‘Later editions are titled Post-humorous notes of the Pickwickian Club.’ University of Aberdeen. Thomas Peckett Prest (1809/10–1859). ODNB ‘... in 1836 Edward Lloyd, then a minor publisher of ephemera, issued Prest's The Sketch Book, by ‘Bos’ in penny numbers. In April 1837, a year after Dickens (Boz) had begun Pickwick Papers (1836–7) in monthly shilling parts, Prest began writing a penny weekly serial, The Posthumorous Notes of the Pickwick Club, or, The Penny Pickwick, by ‘Bos’ (1837–8). Prest's version freely adapted and expanded Dickens's work for a working-class readership. Aided by spirited woodcuts by the popular cartoonist C. J. Grant, 'this disgraceful fabrication', as G. A. Sala noted, 'had an immense sale' (Sala, 74). At over 850 pages it was considerably longer, and at the time probably sold more copies, than Dickens's original ... Prest has been commonly credited with being the author of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, but recent scholarship has revealed that the tale was actually the work of James Malcolm Rymer ... Prest wrote vigorous, stylized prose that popularized penny fiction at the moment when an increasingly literate working-class public were tiring of political and educational reading and looking for entertainment. With his knowledge of popular taste and in particular melodrama he adapted middle-class writing for a popular audience, facilitating a significant stage in the development of literature for the masses ...’

Keywords: LITERATURE; PRE 1900 LITERATURE


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