- Brief description
- Pickwick in America! by T. P. Prest, 1838-9
Content warning: racist language - Label
- Edward Lloyd was a London publisher famous for his 'penny dreadfuls' (cheap, popular stories of adventure or horror for the working class) including 'Sweeney Todd'. Thomas Peckett Prest worked for Lloyd writing plagiarised copies of Dickens's stories. Lloyd and Prest had produced a knock-off of The Pickwick Papers called The Penny Pickwick in 1837. They sold it cheaper and more widely than Dickens's genuine story, and its success led to this sequel, Pickwick in America! in 1838. Here, Prest deviates from copying Dickens's story directly and improvises his own narrative. The story includes several racist caricatures of enslaved Black people but also curiously contains a speech by Mr Pickwick, who has become a plantation owner, about the "injustice and tyranny" of slavery and the rights "of all the human race".
- Collection
- Library
- Object number
- [lib]465
- Object type
- booklet
- Production date
- 1838-9
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