{"description": {"type": "/type/text", "value": "Dickens\u2019 first novel was originally written and published as a serial. It is a comedy relating the misadventures of the members of The Pickwick Club, whose main purpose is to discover and relate quaint and curious phenomena of social life and customs throughout England. This quest takes the members to all parts of the country, travelling by coach and sampling the comforts or otherwise of various coaching inns."}, "authors": [{"author": {"key": "/authors/OL24638A"}, "type": {"key": "/type/author_role"}}], "cover_edition": {"key": "/books/OL8422410M"}, "first_publish_date": "1847", "first_sentence": {"type": "/type/text", "value": "THE first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination, with which his search among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted."}, "key": "/works/OL8763776W", "subject_people": ["Charles Dickens (1812-1870)", "Charles Eskell Van Noorden"], "subject_places": ["England", "London (England)", "Angleterre", "Great Britain"], "subject_times": ["19th century", "19e si\u00e8cle"], "subjects": ["Fiction", "Men", "Societies and clubs", "Male friendship", "Trials (Breach of promise)", "Social life and customs", "Readers", "Ingl\u00e9s", "Travelers", "Literatura inglesa", "English literature", "Libros de lectura", "Selections, extracts", "English fiction", "Humorous stories", "English", "Classic literature", "Social conditions", "British and irish fiction (fictional works by one author)", "England, fiction", "Friendship, fiction", "Fiction, humorous", "Fiction, action & adventure", "Fiction, humorous, general", "London (england), fiction", "Fiction, legal", "Manners and customs", "Fiction, general", "Fiction, historical, general", "Fiction, classics", "R\u00e9cits humoristiques", "Romans, nouvelles", "M\u0153urs et coutumes", "Children's fiction", "Adventure stories", "Adventure and adventurers", "Canada, history", "Long Now Manual for Civilization", "Library", "Libraries", "British literature", "Clubs", "English fictions"], "title": "The Pickwick Papers", "type": {"key": "/type/work"}, "covers": [13130696, 767232, 14303641, 3206402, 10548687, 13179546, 14555891, 13440161, 13620745, 13980185, 13980186, 14026419, 14026420, 14555933], "latest_revision": 18, "revision": 18, "created": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2009-12-10T23:16:15.572612"}, "last_modified": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2025-08-12T07:31:01.450357"}}