Charles Dickens, Sketches by 'Boz', Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People

Amy R. Wong (University of California, Los Angeles)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.07: English Writing and Culture of the Victorian Period, 1837-1901.
Vol. editors: Gillian Fenwick (University of Toronto), Grace Moore (University of Otago)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1836 - 1837

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story Collection

Resources

With The Pickwick Papers (1836-1837), Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz, a collection of short pieces of literary journalism, marked the beginning of the young author’s success as a professional writer. Although critics generally look to Pickwick for the origins of Dickens’s success as a novelist later in his career, the work in Sketches was Dickens’s first taste of success as a paid contributor to the periodical press. Dickens originally published most of the pieces collected under Sketches in a wide variety of different newspapers and periodicals between December 1833 and December 1836, at the beginning struggling just to appear in print. In fact, a twenty-one year old Dickens agreed to offer …

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2674 words

Citation: Wong, Amy R.. "Sketches by 'Boz', Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 December 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2030, accessed 27 November 2024.]

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