In The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens a character is described as a "little hard-headed, Ribston pippin-faced man." Later in the novel a clerk "peeled and ate three Ribston pippins..." In the story "Thoughts about People" in Dickens' Sketches by Boz , a London apprentice is described as having "a watch about the size and shape of a reasonable Ribston pippin..."
