# The Pickwick Papers — Character guide

> Key figures in The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens.

- [Samuel Pickwick](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/samuel_pickwick.md): Pickwick presides over the club he founded, flanked by three loyal Pickwickians, and proposes to widen his field of observation by travelling the country and reporting back. His defining tension is between the dignity of
- [Sam Weller](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/sam_weller.md): Sam enters the story as a boot-black at the White Hart and is hired on the spot when Pickwick needs a servant, negotiating wages, clothes, and duties with cheerful impudence. Where Pickwick is credulous, Sam is canny; hi
- [Nathaniel Winkle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/nathaniel_inkle.md): Winkle is one of the four founding Pickwickians, presented in the club's proceedings as the member whose ruling passion is fame in field, air, and water. His flaw is a vanity that outruns his ability: he claims sporting 
- [Tracy Tupman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/tracy_tupman.md): Tupman sits at Pickwick's right hand, described as adding the enthusiasm of a boy to the wisdom of maturer years in the most pardonable of human weaknesses — love. Time and feeding have rounded his form and buried his wa
- [Augustus Snodgrass](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/augustus_snodgrass.md): Snodgrass sits to Pickwick's left, poetically enveloped in a blue cloak with a canine-skin collar, and is named in the club's founding resolutions as one of the four Corresponding Society members. Pickwick's oration sing
- [Alfred Jingle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/alfred_jingle.md): Jingle bursts into the Pickwickians' world as a dashing stranger whose clipped, telegraphic speech and easy confidence win instant trust. He is a con man by instinct, cadging dinners, engineering elopements, and vanishin
- [Job Trotter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/job_trotter.md): Job Trotter moves through the novel as the quiet shadow to Alfred Jingle's loud, staccato schemer, forever weeping, bowing, and slipping free of blame. His genius is for performance: he can weep on cue, feign loyalty, an
- [Mr. Wardle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/wardle.md): Mr. Wardle is the novel's warm center of gravity away from London: a bluff, generous farmer who welcomes Pickwick's club to his Kentish estate and treats their investigations as an excuse for feasting and games. His fier
- [Emily Wardle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/emily_wardle.md): Emily Wardle belongs to the bright, bustling world of Dingley Dell, where she and her sister Isabella are the emotional prizes around whom the men orbit. Her mildness contrasts with her father's bluster and with the sche
- [Isabella Wardle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/isabella_wardle.md): Mr. Wardle's eldest daughter, who marries Mr. Trundle.
- [Rachael Wardle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/rachael_wardle.md): Mr. Wardle's spinster sister, who is briefly infatuated with Jingle.
- [Bob Sawyer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/bob_sawyer.md): Bob Sawyer is the novel's great engine of impropriety: a swaggering, impecunious surgeon-in-training who treats life as an ongoing joke at propriety's expense. His friendship with Ben Allen, his hopeless pursuit of Arabe
- [Benjamin Allen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/benjamin_allen.md): Ben Allen is a coarse, stout young man with spectacles, a white neckerchief, and a taste for brandy and Cubas, whose friendship with Bob Sawyer is sealed by shared meals and shared mischief. His self-appointed authority 
- [Arabella Allen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/arabella_allen.md): Arabella Allen is the romantic prize her brother Ben and Bob Sawyer conspire to secure, but she has a mind and a taste of her own, and she does not like Bob. Her independence, and the secret attachment it enables, turns 
- [Mr. Perker](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/perker.md): Perker manages the Blue party's campaign with such tactics as locking voters in coach-houses and distributing forty-five green parasols to secure wives and brothers. He becomes Mr. Pickwick's trusted legal advisor, steer
- [Mrs. Bardell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/mrs_bardell.md): Surrounded by gossiping friends like Mrs. Cluppins and Mrs. Sanders, Mrs. Bardell presides over her lodging-house with a mix of maternal fuss and romantic hope. When Pickwick's innocent words about a servant are misconst
- [Dodson and Fogg](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/dodson_and_fogg.md): Dodson and Fogg operate from a dim office where clients are commodities and truth is a negotiable inconvenience. They take up Mrs. Bardell's cause not from conviction but from the certainty of costs, and their relentless
- [Mr. Pott](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/pott.md): Editor of the Eatanswill Gazette, a pompous and quarrelsome newspaperman.
- [Mrs. Pott](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/mrs_pott.md): Mr. Pott's domineering wife, who flirts with Mr. Winkle.
- [Mr. Stiggins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/stiggins.md): Stiggins attaches himself to Mrs. Weller as her spiritual adviser, trading sanctimonious sermons for frequent access to her kitchen and cellar. His hypocrisy—praying loudly while drinking steadily—makes him a target of T
- [Tony Weller](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/tony_weller.md): Tony Weller drives his coach between London and the provinces, dispensing hard-earned maxims about marriage, money, and the treachery of attorneys. His second marriage to a pious widow brings him into conflict with Stigg
- [Mrs. Weller](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/mrs_weller.md): Tony Weller's second wife, a devout follower of Mr. Stiggins.
- [Mary](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/mary.md): Mary works in the household of the pompous magistrate Mr. Nupkins, where she encounters Sam Weller during the Pickwickians' misadventures in Ipswich. Her good looks and lively manner prompt Sam's gallant attentions, and 
- [Peter Magnus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/peter_magnus.md): A nervous and comical gentleman who proposes to Miss Witherfield.
- [Dowler](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/dowler.md): A blustering and cowardly military man who travels with the Pickwickians.
- [Angelo Cyrus Bantam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/angelo_cyrus_bantam.md): The Master of the Ceremonies at the Bath assembly rooms.
- [Dowager Lady Snuphanuph](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/dowager_lady_snuphanuph.md): A haughty aristocratic lady at Bath.
- [Solomon Pell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/solomon_pell.md): A seedy lawyer who handles legal matters for the Wellers.
- [Serjeant Buzfuz](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/serjeant_buzfuz.md): The bombastic barrister who prosecutes Mrs. Bardell's case against Pickwick.
- [Justice Stareleigh](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/justice_stareleigh.md): The irritable and deaf judge presiding over the Bardell vs. Pickwick trial.
- [Mrs. Cluppins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/mrs_cluppins.md): A witness for Mrs. Bardell, who testifies at the trial.
- [Tom Roker](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/tom_roker.md): The turnkey at the Fleet Prison, who oversees Mr. Pickwick's incarceration.
- [Smangle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/smangle.md): A flashy and unscrupulous debtor in the Fleet Prison.
- [Mivins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/mivins.md): A friendly and eccentric fellow prisoner in the Fleet.
- [Jack Bamber](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/jack_bamber.md): An old debtor in the Fleet who tells ghostly stories.
- [Mr. Lowten](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/lowten.md): Mr. Perker's clerk, who assists with legal matters.
- [Gabriel Grub](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/gabriel_grub.md): A surly sexton who is reformed by a supernatural Christmas vision.
- [Grummer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/grummer.md): A bumbling police officer who attempts to arrest Mr. Pickwick.
- [Mr. Trundle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/mr_trundle.md): A young man who marries Isabella Wardle.
- [John Smauker](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/john_smauker.md): A servant to a gentleman in Bath, who befriends Sam Weller.
- [Slurk](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/slurk.md): Editor of the rival Eatanswill newspaper, the Gazette.
- [Mr. Blotton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/mr_blotton.md): A member of the Pickwick Club who questions Mr. Pickwick's authorship.
- [Mr. Winkle Sr.](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/mr_winkle_snr.md): Nathaniel Winkle's father, who disapproves of his son's marriage.
- [Samuel Slumkey](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters/samuel_slumkey.md): A parliamentary candidate in Eatanswill.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_pickwick_papers_se/characters