Introduction
Introduction
Contents of This Site
Origins of This Site
Why Pickwick Papers?
Publication History of Pickwick Papers
Illustration History of Pickwick Papers
Theoretical Framework
Why "Bardell versus Pickwick"?
Format Decisions
Sources
Contents of This Site
The trial of "Bardell versus Pickwick" occurs in Chapter 33 of the first edition of Pickwick Papers. This site presents four different versions of this chapter. The first version includes the written contents of the chapter. Throughout the site, links to "The Trial" will take you to this version. The version appears on a white background and preserves the page breaks of the source document (a copy of the first edition); it can be printed and cited easily. The three other versions of this chapter contain the written story and accompanying illustrations. Throughout the site, links to "The Trial (Illustrated)" will take you these versions. All three versions use the same written story as "The Trial," but they offer three different illustration options. Each illustrated version has a title screen that explains the illustration format for the version and provides a link to a window that displays all of the illustrations—along with their sources, dimensions, and description—that appear in that particular version of the illustrated trial. All four versions of the trial scene include information about editorial techniques. Within "The Trial" links appears to a window that contains a description of the editorial method used for the written story; within "The Illustrated Trial" links appear to a window that contains a detailed account of the rationale for the image placement within each illustrated version. Also, each illustrated version has an accompanying teaching exercise. The teaching exercises contain two to three questions about the illustrations used in the corresponding illustrated version. These exercises are suitable for advanced undergraduate students. Additionally, the site includes a section on future developments, outlining possible avenues for expansion. For information on the web author click on the link to "About this Site." Along with information about the web author, this screen includes information on copyright and site navigation.
Origins of This Site
The inspiration for this site stems, as most inspiration does, from something that initially seems unrelated. In this case, inspiration struck while I watched the latest adaptation of an Austen novel to hit the big screen: Mansfield Park (1999). After watching this movie, I left the theater feeling, simultaneously, uneasy and elated. The film's depiction of its heroine, Fanny Price, inspired both reactions. In the novel, Fanny is a shy, responsible, and compassionate wallflower; in the film, she is a quick-witted and imaginative young author—a character very similar to Jane Austen. I felt the depiction of Fanny kept the film from addressing the same issues as the novel; at the same time, I admired the way the film incorporated Austen's personality and juvenilia.This mixed response led to a question: how do we define the boundaries of a work of literature? One question only leads to more questions. Is the work the story written by the author or is it the complete book as read by the reader? If it is the story as written by the author, then what version of that story? Is it the manuscript, the first published version, or the last revised version? Could it be all of them? If, on the other hand, the work is the book as read by the reader, then which editions? Is it the first edition, the editions published during the author's lifetime, the latest scholarly edition, or the latest popular edition? Could it be all of them? The questions get even more complicated when we consider issues of illustration and adaptation. Is Mansfield Park, the film, the same work as Mansfield Park, the book? If so, which film and which book? If not, what is it? These questions, and many others like them, led me to conclude that the "work" contains all of these elements.
Why Pickwick Papers?
At this point in time, it is difficult to imagine Pickwick Papers as the latest craze. However, at the time of its publication (1836-1837) this book was a public phenomenon. Not only did the public fervor for the book make Charles Dickens a household name, it also spawned numerous adaptations, piracies, clubs, and extra illustrations. Dickens has belonged to academic circles, as a literary genius at the heart of the literary canon, for so long that it is difficult for a modern reader to understand the popular attention that this book drew. The immensity of the public fervor will be easier for a modern reader to understand through a direct comparison with more modern popular sensations: the Simpsons and Pokemon. Remember that time in the not so distant past when almost every adolescent boy, and many adults, wore a Bart Simpson T-shirt? Almost every store had Bart Simpson figurines, key-chains, clothing, or skateboards. The fanatic youth interest in Pokemon, a trend that has yet to completely die out, provides another example. The ads for Pokemon products proclaim "Gotta Catch'em All." It turns out that all you can catch is quite a lot: trading cards, videos, wallets, clothing, backpacks, lunchboxes, and a multitude of other items. Pickwick Papers is strikingly similar to these modern popular sensations—you can find antique cookie jars in the shape of Mr. Pickwick's head on e-bay—except in scale. For its time, the interest in Pickwick Papers (in the English speaking world) was more pervasive than any modern public phenomenon. Pickwick Papers appealed to all ages and classes of people. Often people would gather in groups of twenty or more to hear the pages read aloud. During the initial publication of Pickwick Papers in twenty monthly parts, entrepreneurs sold cheaper "piracies" of the parts to those who could not afford to pay one shilling per installment. There were half a dozen stage adaptations before Dickens finished writing the last chapter. Also, several artists sold "extra" illustrations of the work. Although the time period of its initial publication marks the height of the book's widespread popularity, the public adaptation and expansion of Pickwick Papers continued for over a century after its publication. Although currently Pickwick Papers inspires more scholarly interest than public interest, it may well return to the public spotlight; after all, the 1990s saw Jane Austen featured in Entertainment Weekly. The public interest in and appropriation of Pickwick Papers, during and after its publication, makes it an ideal case study for exploring the boundaries of the work.
Publication History of Pickwick Papers
This site uses a copy of the first edition of Pickwick Papers as a source document for the written story; this emphasis necessitates a brief history of the first edition. Initially, Pickwick Papers was published in 20 separate parts; each part contained 28 to 32 pages of the written story and 2 to 4 illustrations. The last two parts, 19 and 20, were bound together, along with the title page, table of contents, and directions to the binder. As Pickwick Papers escalated in popularity, earlier numbers were reprinted to meet the growing demand for copies. During the reprinting several minor changes were introduced. Readers could save all the parts and take them to a binder to have them made into one book. Also, the publishers bound and sold left over copies of the parts and then reprinted the entire sequence, with more corrections and variations, and sold them in book format. Due to this complex and prolonged publication process there is substantial variation between copies of the first edition of Pickwick Papers.The variation does not stop with the first edition. Several editions of the book were published during Charles Dickens's lifetime; for some editions, Dickens made substantial revisions to the story. Additionally, the book has been edited and reprinted hundreds of times since its first publication. Also, the episodic nature of Pickwick Papers led to the publication of several abridgments of the tale, several highlighting a single episode. Various dramatizations of episodes within Pickwick Papers have been published. This site includes an excerpt from a dramatized version of the trial scene (see Future Developments). Pickwick Papers also inspired the publication of editions that include segments of the written story and commentary on those segments. For example, Bardell v. Pickwick, by Percy Fitzgerald, contains selections from the trial scene along with a detailed account of nineteenth century legal practices. These few examples are only a small sampling of the wealth of variation within the publication history of Pickwick Papers.
Illustration History of Pickwick Papers
The first edition of Pickwick Papers had three official illustrators: Seymour, Buss, and Phiz. Seymour designed the image on the green wrapper that covered each installment of the serial publication; he also drew the illustrations for the first two parts. Initially, each installment of Pickwick Papers contained 28 pages of written story and 4 illustrations. However, only the first installment appeared in this format, since Seymour committed suicide before he finished the final illustration for Number II. After Seymour's death, the ratio of pages of written story to pages of illustrations was changed to 32 pages of story and 2 illustrations. Buss completed the two illustrations for Number III before being replaced by Phiz, who produced the illustrations for all of the remaining parts. Multiple variations exist between the illustrations in various copies of the first edition. For instance, some copies include Buss's illustration of the "fat boy" witnessing a stolen kiss. However, some reprints replace Buss's illustration with a Phiz's later illustration of the same scene, entitled of "The Fat Boy Awake—On This Occasion Only." Also, reprints of early numbers of the first edition introduce various slight modifications to several of the images. So, two copies of the first edition may not contain the same images.During the initial publication of Pickwick Papers several artists sold "extra" illustrations to accompany each number. Some of these illustrators advertised their products within the pages of advertisements included in each installment of Pickwick Papers. Additionally, many later editions of Pickwick Papers contain new illustrations; other later editions contain new illustrations along with reproductions of the illustrations from the first edition. For example, a 1909 edition, annotated by C. Van Noorden, claims to add "223 additional pictures of originals of characters and places, scenes and incidents, curious topical allusions, references and analogies and facsimilies." As these select examples indicate, Pickwick Papers has a long and complex illustration history. This site displays and analyzes some of the variation in illustration formats.
Theoretical Framework
I began my exploration with a question: how do we define the boundaries of a work of literature? Thus far, my description of Pickwick Papers illustrates that the work contains immense variation. Conceptualizing the work in a manner that emphasizes variation opposes a popular tendency within textual theory to limit the definition of the work to the intentions of the author. An example of an author-centered approach to a work appears in "The Ideal of Textual Criticism" (1995), by James Thorpe. Thorpe argues, "the ideal of textual criticism is to present the text the author intended" (50). Various critics attack the centrality of the author by establishing the centrality of the physical book or the centrality of the reader. Margreta De Grazia and Peter Stallybras, authors of "The Materiality of Shakespearean Text"(1993), provide an example of the former approach. They believe that emphasizing the intentions of the author privileges a disembodied, "ideal" text over historical documents: "This 'ideal representation' bears witness to the unattainable goal of achieving an exact reproduction of a text that never possessed a single or fixed form" (261). Richard Altick and Roger Chartier are examples of critics who emphasize the role of the reader. In The English Common Reader (1957), Altick stresses the "incalculable" significance of the "impact of the mass public upon modern English literature" (6). In The Order of Books (1994) Roger Chartier also imagines a theory of the work that includes the reader: "Works—even the greatest works, especially the greatest works—have no stable, universal, or fixed meaning. They are invested with plural and mobile significations that are constructed in the encounter between a proposal and a reception" (ix). Rather than emphasizing any of these categories—author, material book, or reader—at the expense of the others, I believe that all these categories are essential for understanding a work.While understanding that all works have an author (or authors), a multitude of physical manifestations, and a reception history is not a difficult step, the practical ramifications of presenting this work are more cumbersome. If the work includes the immensity of variation that accumulates through time, and if the author, the physical object, and the reader are all important, then how can any edition (either printed or hypertext) adequately represent a work? Realistically, no one edition can represent the entire work. Therefore, rather than attempting to present a definitive edition of the work, an edition should attempt to demonstrate a limited aspect of the work. The main emphasis of editing should be the clear articulation of the goals and limitations of an edition, along with the methods used to create the edition.
The contents of this web site are an attempt to but this theory into practice. This site does not attempt to present the entirety of Pickwick Papers; the discussion within earlier sections of this introduction highlights the impossibility of that task. Instead, this site offers a limited slice of Pickwick Papers. This site presents one chapter of Pickwick Papers illustrated in various ways in order to begin a discussion about the relationship between the written and illustrative components of the chapter. The materials included on this site are representative, rather than comprehensive; the three illustrated versions provide examples of certain types of illustrative variation. In order to begin a discussion about different illustration formats, this site includes teaching exercises. Since this site focuses on promoting understanding of illustrative variation, other considerations are secondary to this goal.
Why "Bardell versus Pickwick"?
Although Pickwick Papers has an episodic format, some episodes are more self-contained than others. The trial of "Bardell versus Pickwick" is one of the most self-contained episodes; although there are references within the scene to earlier episodes, it is still possible for a reader who is unfamiliar with the rest of the book to understand and appreciate this scene. Not only is the trial scene sufficiently self-contained to make it a logical choice for this web site, it is also one of the best-known and most popular episodes within Pickwick Papers. The multiple adaptations and abridgments of this scene attest to its popularity. Moreover, Dickens created a reading version of this scene that he presented several times during his lifetime. More importantly, the popularity of this scene inspired a variety of illustrations of its characters and locations. For all of these reasons, I selected the trial scene of "Bardell versus Pickwick" as the focal point for this site.
Format Decisions
This site provides introductory examples of the variation within a work in a manner suitable for undergraduate viewers. In order to meet this goal, I chose to emphasize one aspect of variation within a work: variation in illustration. In order to allow viewers to focus on the variation within the illustrations, I intentionally avoided emphasizing variation within the written story. For this reason, the written story is exactly the same in all four versions of the trial scene on this site. The source for the written story in all four versions is a bound copy of the first edition of Pickwick Papers from MssSCUA, University of Washington Libraries. MssSCUA owns three copies of the first edition of Pickwick Papers; two copies are bound and one contains the 20 numbers in 19 parts. Practical considerations determined my selection of the exact source document for the written story within this site; of the copies of the first edition I had access to, I used the copy that had a strong enough binding to allow photocopying. My decision to use the first edition as the source of the written story arose from my desire to discuss the illustration placement within two copies of the first edition in Teaching Exercise A. The Trial (without illustrations) and Illustrated Version A reproduce the format of a historical document—the copy of the first edition used as a source document. On the other hand, Illustrated Versions B and C do not reproduce the format of a historical document. Instead, I selected the illustrations for Illustrated Versions B and C with the goal of highlighting particular styles of illustration: character sketches and historical images. Within these versions, the illustrations come from multiple sources and time periods and the written story continues to be from a copy of the first edition; the combination of story and illustrations found in these versions only exists on this web site. The teaching exercises that correspond with these editions ask viewers to examine how changes in illustration format influence their understanding of the written story. The creation of versions that highlight particular formats of illustration allows the viewer to closely examine each format. Introducing variations in the written story would make isolating the effects of changing the illustrations more difficult. As you can see, the artificial fixity of the written story arises from the education goals of this site. Analyzing the contents of this site is only first step in exploring the immense variation within a work. The Future Developments section of this site briefly describes possibilities for expanding this site to include variation within the written story.