Sam Weller

Sam Weller is a humorous Cockney bootblack who appears in The Pickwick Papers, the first novel by Charles Dickens. First introduced in the fourth serialised episode of the book, the character became a significant figure in literary history as the creation that made Dickens famous.

Before Sam Weller’s introduction, the monthly parts of the novel were struggling, selling only about 1,000 copies each month. The character’s humor transformed the work into a publishing phenomenon, causing sales to rise to 40,000 copies a month by late autumn of 1837.