The Pickwick Papers - Opening

CHAPTER I
The Pickwickians

The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of this 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 Cllub, which the editor of these papers feel 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.

First published 1836-7
Published in Penguin Classics 1999
Reprinted with a revised Dickens chronology 2003

Introduction and Notes copyright Mark Wormald, 1999
A Dickens Chronology copyright Stephen Wall, 1995, 2003

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