Goetsch, Paul
“Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers and Don Quixote”. In: Cervantes in the English Speaking World. (Estudios de literatura 96) Kassel 2005, pp. 143-158.

As the genesis of The Pickwick Papers (1836/37) indicates, Don Quixote is a less concrete source for the characters and episodes of Dickens’s novel than a general model which Dickens (1812-1870), like other English writers before him, chose to follow. At times, Pickwick is quite unlike Cervantes’ protagonist, he seems to be an inversion of the Don. As quixotic heroes, both of them are admirable characters because of the values they so ridiculously represent. Their servants, Sancho Panza and Sam Weller, are distant cousins. Sam also is Dickens’s surrogate and acts as the protector of the Pickwickian vision of the world. Don Quixote and The Pickwick Papers respond to different historical contexts.