Sketches by Boz (The Oxford Illustrated Dickens) [Hardcover]

Charles Dickens (Author), Thea Holme (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 22, 1987

The young Dickens composed these sketches, his first attempts at authorship, poised between two worlds. Thea Holmes writes in her Introduction, 'On the one hand Dickens depicts in relentless detail the horrors of poverty, disease, and crime - legacy of eighteenth-century London; on the other the prosperous vulgarity of the rapidly rising middle class.' Among the many essays are 'Scotland Yard', 'Gin-Shops', 'Shabby-Genteel People', and 'The Steam Excursion'. 'It is for the glimpses they afford us of their author that these sketches have a special fascination: not only in foreshadowings of future greatness but in those touches which reveal the young Boz himself.'

Editorial Reviews

Review

Title of two series of collected sketches and short tales by Charles Dickens, writing under the pseudonym BOZ. First published in book form in 1836, Sketches contains some 60 pieces that had originally been published in the Monthly Magazine and the Morning Chronicle and other periodicals. Subtitled "Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People," Sketches contains Dickens' impressions and graphically described observations of the teeming street life of Victorian London. The critical and commercial success achieved by Sketches was partly a result of the clever illustrations by George Cruikshank, who also illustrated other novels by Dickens. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From the Publisher

This book is in Electronic Paperback Format. If you view this book on any of the computer systems below, it will look like a book. Simple to run, no program to install. Just put the CD in your CDROM drive and start reading. The simple easy to use interface is child tested at pre-school levels.

Windows 3.11, Windows/95, Windows/98, OS/2 and MacIntosh and Linux with Windows Emulation.

Includes Quiet Vision's Dynamic Index. the abilty to build a index for any set of characters or words. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 688 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press; Reprint edition (October 22, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192545183
• ISBN-13: 978-0192545183
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.9 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #762,738 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

One of the grand masters of Victorian literature, Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsea, England. He died in Kent on June 9, 1870. The second of eight children of a family continually plagued by debt, the young Dickens came to know not only hunger and privation,but also the horror of the infamous debtors' prison and the evils of child labor. A turn of fortune in the shape of a legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and "slave" factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years' formal schooling at Wellington House Academy. He worked as an attorney's clerk and newspaper reporter until his Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life. In later years, the pressure of serial writing, editorial duties, lectures, and social commitments led to his separation from Catherine Hogarth after twenty-three years of marriage. It also hastened his death at the age of fifty-eight, when he was characteristically engaged in a multitude of work.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great sampler, December 14, 2008

By 

Seth Davidson "Seth Davidson" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sketches By BOZ Illustrative Of Everyday Life And Everyday People (Paperback)

I read the Kindle edition of the book; it's a great sampler of classic Dickens without having to do the full-on 400+ readathon that many of his best works require. The most enjoyable aspect of the stories is the historic, authentic feel they give of London in the early 1800's. Dickens's keen eye for detail and his ability to describe it in a lively manner make this series of short stories a true time slip of a book.

The bubbling cauldron of 19th Century English society boils over the edges in these usually funny, always entertaining, often gripping sketches of people and places in London. His nostalgia for places and people being displaced by the economic growth brought on by the industrial revolution is strongest in his sketch "Scotland Yard," and the book is filled with a keen respect for the past without making apologies for its brutalities or injustices.

As with so many things written by Dickens, courting, drunkenness, elopement, hanky-panky, hypocrisy, true love, and human goodness feature prominently throughout. Stories such as "The Election for Beadle" presage the fuller parody of British elections that appears in "The Pickwick Papers," and his derisiveness in "Parliamentary Sketch" brings to bear much of his earlier experiences as a political reporter.

As in all his writing, however, Dickens's strength and power show strongest when he writes about the cab drivers, curates, hackney drivers, omnibus cads, chimney sweeps, circus performers, theater actors, gin shop waitresses, pawnbrokers, prison inmates, invalids, drunks, prostitutes, spinsters, lonely old men, unhappily married couples, abused wives, pensioners, milliners, and "shabby-genteel" people who made up the ordinary walks of life.

This book is a rare combination of humor, history, and pathos, all rolled into one.

1.0 out of 5 stars Sketches by Boz as read by Anais 9000, February 11, 2012

By 

Sgt. Buzzfuzz - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Sketches By Boz (Audio CD)

Imagine one of the funniest and saddest collection of short stories by one of the greatest writers in the English language read by an vocally affectless female computer. Absolutely the worst thing ever foisted on an unwary public. Not worth spending a dime on. Pass it by friend.Sketches By Boz