Brief description: The Pickwick Songster
Label: Thomas Peckett Prest was a musician and writer who made cheap knock-offs and plagiarisms of Dickens's stories throughout the 1830s. Prest was a better writer than other plagiarists, and may have even written the original Varney the Vampire and 'Sweeney Todd' horror stories (the latter appearing in the serial The String of Pearls), but he would die in poverty and obscurity. This compilation of songs based on The Pickwick Papers contains a rare portrait of Prest himself. A later hand wrote a publishing date of August 1837 which, if accurate, meant it was written before Dickens had even finished the original story.
Collection: Library
Object number: [lib]2240
Object type: book
Title: The Pickwick Songster
Production person: Anon
Production date: 1837

The Pickwick Songster