It was 1836 and the first installments of his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, had sold only about 400 copies. By the end of the following year, Charles Dickens was a household name and his monthlies were selling 40,000 copies. Nina Martyris explains: "What changed? It was in this fourth installment that readers met Sam Weller, a cheerful young bootblack with a distinctive cockney idiolect — a character, in other words, in whom many readers could recognize themselves."
April 26, 2015