Which publishing firm commissioned Charles Dickens to write The Pickwick Papers?

Chapman and Hall commissioned Charles Dickens to write The Pickwick Papers.

The publishing firm originally had a different project in mind: a series of comic sporting illustrations by Robert Seymour. Chapman & Hall asked Dickens to supply connected text explaining the plates and linking them into a fashionable picture narrative. Dickens accepted the commission despite admitting that he knew little about sport, and the project developed into a novel centred on Samuel Pickwick and his companions.

The arrangement quickly changed the balance between words and pictures. Dickens generally wrote the narrative first, leaving the illustrator to depict scenes from the completed instalment. Seymour illustrated the first two parts before his death; Robert William Buss illustrated the third, but Dickens rejected his work. Hablot Knight Browne, later known as “Phiz,” then illustrated most of the remaining instalments.

The novel appeared in 19 monthly numbers from March 1836 to October 1837. A frequent mix-up is Bradbury and Evans, another important Victorian publishing firm that later worked with Dickens, but it was Chapman & Hall that initiated The Pickwick Papers.