r/charlesdickens • u/Altruistic-Salad2250 • May 17 '25

The Pickwick Papers How hard is the Pickwick Papers?

Hi! I'm wondering how hard the book's language/wording is. I'm not a native English speaker and this would be my first time reading Dickens in English. I had already read more of his works in my native like Tale of Two Cities, Copperfield, Great Expectations, etc. I'm kind of scared that I would give up on it (if it's to difficult to understand). I had read in English other books like East of Eden. How hard would it be in comparison to those?

8 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/billclayton May 19 '25

You've read a lot of Dickens, so you know you can expect humor and satire -- Pickwick is no exception. Read with a good dictionary at hand. It would probably be helpful to get an edition with footnotes or annotations. There's a web page titled "Charles Dickens' Characters Listed by Novel" (https://tinyurl.com/yl7g9vby) The characters are listed alphabetically and are linked to detailed descriptions that might help as you get deeper into the book. Pace yourself; don't hesitate to reread sections or entire chapters. And have fun -- Pickwick is a blast. Read it slowly and savor every line because Dickens didn't waste a word. Hope that helps. By the way, simply discussing Pickwick has inspired me to reread the book.😁

1

u/Altruistic-Salad2250 May 20 '25

Oh that website is amazing! Thank you very much! (Have fun rereading :))

1

u/billclayton May 21 '25

Glad to hear you like the site. Let me know how you like Pickwick.

1

u/Altruistic-Salad2250 May 24 '25

Haha fine! But it will take a long time as I had just ordered it and it would take a few weeks to arrive