Sketches by Boz
by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens' first book, The Sketches of Bose, heralded a new and fascinating voice in English literature. This rich collection of observations, fantasies and fiction shows the London he knows intimately at best and at worst – the streets, theatres, inns, pawnshops, courts, prisons, omnibuses, and the River Thames – through honest and far-sighted depictions of everyday life and people. While Dickens's social critical powers are never off the surface in his pen portraits, often through pen portraits featuring characters from his great novels, in prison cells, harrulous matrons, rough young clerks, and Scrooge-like bachelors, Dickens's powers of social criticism are never far from the surface in the unyielding images of the forgotten citizens of a metropolis as great as child labor. An impressive blend of humor and pain, these sketches reveal London as a great place for an outstanding young writer.
