Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Pickwick Papers was exuberant, farcical, and heartwarming, one of the funniest books of the century. It showed Dickens social concerns, as he wrote of poverty and the need for play in children's lives. Dickens was able to resign as a journalist and devote himself to his art. Neither Dickens, the reading public, nor literature would be the same again." [Furtado: 1001 Days]