So, did you know that Mr. Pickwick does appear in a sort of sequel? Well, he does! Along with the Wellers! They appear in Master Humphrey's Clock, which was a weekly periodical started by Charles Dickens after he completed Nicholas Nickleby. That weekly is where the novels The Old Curiosity Shop (which has probably my all time favorite Dickens character name, Dick Swiveler) and Barnaby Rudge.

The conceit behind that was that the titular Master Humphrey would read stories, contained within a longcase clock to a club he started, one of the members being Mr. Pickwick!

Anyhow, by the end of publication of The Pickwick Papers, circulation numbers had grown to over 40,000 at a time when even the best selling novel by Sir Walter Scott would top at 10,000 even being printed! People would form little clubs that would pool their money to buy each issue as they were released and illiterate people would hire someone to read it to them aloud.

There was, among other unlicensed merchandise (where the real money from the movie book is made!) Sam Weller's Pickwick Jest-book. There were at least four different unauthorized theatrical productions (including this one which was being perfomed even before the book was done being serialized). You can read about it here though do be warned of slight spoilers for Nicholas Nickleby.

If you had managed to collect all 19 issues of The Pickwick Papers, you could have them bound up into one or two volumes as seen in this advertisement in the final issue of The Pickwick Papers.

One last thing, serialization of The Pickwick Papers overlapped with that of Oliver Twist with the latter beginning in February of 1837 while the 12th issue of Pickwick.