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Originally Posted by Sparrow
While that's generally true, I think it was a weakness in 'The Pickwick Papers'; where it seems that he kept chucking in chapters that had nothing to do with the story - presumably the imminent deadline made him use stuff he already had to hand.
I used to regard 'Pickwick' as my favourite Dickens, but a rereading a few years ago made me aware that these chapters were serious flaws in the book.
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"Pickwick", though, was never originally intended to be a novel; it was commissioned as a series of amusing stories for a monthly magazine, with Mr. Pickwick and friends merely there as a "connecting device" to loosely link the stories into some sort of framework. It was also Dickens' first work of fiction, so really needs to be judged as the work of a very young and inexperienced writer - he was only 24 at the time of its publication.
I'd suggest something like "Great Expectations" or "A Tale of Two Cities" for anyone who wants to read Dickens more "mature" work, and doesn't want anything too long and "heavy". Both can be downloaded here at MR.
I've just uploaded a thoroughly proof-read new version of "David Copperfield", if anyone wants to read that. It was Dickens' own personal favourite of his books, and is semi-autobiographical (although nobody knew that until after his death, when the extreme hardship he'd suffered as a child came to light in his friend John Forster's biography of him). It is, however,
very long - I think it's Dickens' longest book.