Category Archives: Charles Dickens

Some Thoughts on Sketches by Boz

This is my most recent piece for the Dickens special edition of The Copperfield Review. I’ll be adding my thoughts about The Pickwick Papers next week.

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Even the most die-hard Dickens fans are not so well acquainted with his first published pieces, short works of fiction and rides of imaginary fancy alongside observations of 1830s London life. The individual sketches were compiled into the book Sketches by Boz, first in 1836 and then in subsequent editions. Literary critics have largely dismissed the sketches, and, as Dennis Walder states in his Introduction to Sketches by Boz for the Penguin Classics edition (1995), Dickens himself didn’t do much to improve public perception of those early works.

With the retrospect that comes with the passing of time (and greater literary successes), Dickens looked back his early sketches with skeptical eyes. He said (at the ripe old age of thirty-eight) that the sketches were written when “I was a very young man, and sent into the world with all their imperfections (a good many) on their heads. They comprise my first attempts at authorship—with the exception of certain tragedies achieved at the mature age of eight or ten, and represented with great appplause to overflowing nurseries” (Preface to the first Cheap Edition, Sketches by Boz, 1850).

This is where I differ from the stodgy, humorless critics, and even from Boz himself, since I admit (without the slightest hint of sarcasm or embarrassment) that I love the sketches. I’m not saying they stand equal to Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities. I’m saying that for what they are, Dickens’ earliest published pieces, they’re gems—well-written, insightful, bursting with energy, and, most importantly, absolutely hilarious. I’ve always said I can forgive anyone anything if they can make me laugh. I will forgive Dickens whatever needs forgiving because no other writer makes me laugh out loud (I mean milk-spurting-through-the-nose laugh out loud) the way he can. Even in these earliest works his sarcastic observational humor is spot-on. The sketches are exactly what the young Dickens wrote them to be—individual pieces that were either short stories or come-as-you-are journalism. That’s all. If we take them at face value then we can appreciate the first glimmers of literary genius in a man who was so very young when he started.

His first sketch, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” appeared in December 1833 when Dickens was twenty-one years old. Dickens himself told the story of how he had surreptitiously dropped the manuscript off at the publisher, and how, when he found out the piece was going to be published, he was so overwhelmed with emotion he wasn’t fit to be seen in the street. Published the first time he submits his work? Well, he was Dickens. And even in that very first piece (later known as “Mr. Minns and His Cousin”) we can see the beginning of Dickens’ preoccupation with class relationships. The story is a comedy of manners as the Buddins family tries ever so hard to ingratiate themselves into the will of Mr. Minns, their wealthier cousin. Other, more journalistic-type sketches such as “London Recreations,” “Vauxhall Gardens by Day,” and “The Pawnbroker’s Shop” are notes on his thoughts as he rambles through London and notices everything everywhere around him. That was a talent Dickens displayed throughout his career–his ability to see what was right in front of him and reflect it back while everyone else simply scurried past in their rush from here to there and back again. For those of us reading the sketches in the twenty-first century, it’s a time traveling experience to see 19th century London, with its odd cast of characters, come to life before our eyes. I’m willing to bet that “Making a Night of It,” about young men out to have an alcohol-infused good time, is based on an actual experience of Dickens’. (Did I read that somewhere?) And then, in “A Visit to Newgate,” he imagines what it might be like for a prisoner awaiting his execution with all the emotional intensity we’ve come to expect from the older, more seasoned Dickens.

Don’t pay any attention to Dickens’ own criticism against the sketches (Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!) since most writers tend to look back on their earliest works as silly. In fact, Dickens did rearrange and revise the sketches for subsequent editions in later years, so he took more care with them than he wanted us to believe. Whatever criticisms about the sketches I’ve read (they’re too haphazard, there are no recurring themes, there’s no depth to the descriptions) may even be true, but to focus on the weaknesses is to miss the point of Sketches by Boz. Through the process of writing these pieces, Dickens was able to begin to lay a path through which he could nurture his genius.

Every Dickens fan should be required to read Sketches by Boz since 1. The pieces are a sneak peek into the workings of the mind of a young man on the road to literary greatness, and 2. They stand just fine on their own as short stories and journalistic impressions. And besides, they’re damn funny.

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Addendum: Since this piece appeared in Copperfield, I’ve had a few e-mails asking, to paraphrase slightly, “Who the hell is Boz?”

Boz was Dickens’ nickname, and some of his earliest works were published under that pseudonym. Dickens said that Boz was “the nickname of a pet child, a younger brother, whom I had dubbed Moses, in honour of Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield.” Moses, being pronounced “facetiously through the nose” (Dickens’ words) became Bozes, which was shortened to Boz. Dickens adopted the name for himself when he began publishing his writing, and most of the sketches were attributed to “Boz.”

Dickens at 200

I wanted to share my “Dear Readers” essay for the Winter 2012 edition of The Copperfield Review here. Since February 7, 2012 is Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday, we put together a special edition featuring our favorite author. You can read it here. Enjoy.

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I’ve been wondering what Dickens would think if he could see us in the 21st century. On the surface, the world seems so different than it was 200 years ago, and in many ways it is. Technology, medicine, manners, clothing, and women’s roles in society (thank God) have changed dramatically. As I’m writing this on my MacBook Pro, listening to my iPod, and checking my e-mail, I’m picturing Dickens sitting at his desk with his quill and ink and I’m thankful for things like delete keys and flat-screen monitors. I was just reading one of Dickens’ letters to a friend (Dickens was in Italy at the time) and he pointed out the smudge on the paper–a fly fell into the ink and there it was. No fly smudges here! And yet as I think of Dickens checking out our electronic doodahs and thingamajigs, I don’t think he’d be as impressed as we’d like him to be. You can talk in real time to someone on the other side of the globe through phone or text but there are still homeless people with no shelter from the cold? Hungry children with no health care? People who want to earn a living and there’s no work for them? You can send people and satellites into space, but the current generation is less educated than the one before?

In 200 years, we haven’t come as far socially as we have technologically. We’re still dealing with the same issues Dickens railed against in the 19th century. Poverty, hunger, lack of education, a selfish and uncaring upper class are all still too prevalent, especially in the wake of the recent economic downturn. Perhaps it’s appropriate that Dickens’ 200th birthday coincides with a time when we can recognize his world as our own. In times past, I would read Dickens and think how lucky we were to be living in the (then) 20th century when we knew better. Now, I read Dickens and see examples of the poverty he described everywhere around me. We’ve gone backwards, not forwards, in eradicating the social ills Dickens fought in his fiction, his journalism, and his charitable work. We have a lot to learn from him (again) about treating others with the dignity they deserve as fellow human beings. I certainly need as much of a reminder on that point as anyone. Dickens makes us laugh by pointing out the hypocrisy in selfish-minded characters like Mr. Bumble in Olivier Twist or Wackford Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby, but we also nod our heads because we’ve seen such selfishness in others, and also (if we’re being honest) in ourselves. If we can recognize our own selfishness, admit to it, and work on doing better next time, we can help those around us instead of hurting them. Which is really how we should live to begin with.

We can read Dickens for the social message, or we can read him for entertainment. We can read him to cry, or to laugh. I became a Dickens fan when I read David Copperfield as an English major in grad school (read my review here), and I have remained a Dickens fan because I cannot name another author who has created such a wealth of memorable characters I want to visit with again and again. I have been asked in interviews which authors most influenced my own writing. Without skipping a beat, I always answer, “Charles Dickens.”

What began as an idea for a special edition of The Copperfield Review has grown into a year’s project. I’ve decided to reread all of Dickens’ work–beginning with Sketches by Boz and ending with The Mystery of Edwin Drood–and I’m not just hitting the novels. I’m reading his letters and his journalism along with assorted biographies and critical essays. So far, I’m up to Barnaby Rudge (one of his two works of historical fiction). Next is American Notes. I’ll be writing about my experiences reading and rereading Dickens, and you can find my musings here in future posts and in The Copperfield Review. I’m looking at this as my own personal dissertation for the Ph.D. in English literature I never went for. I’m not affiliated with any university. I’m just a Dickens fan who’s fascinated by his work and curious about why it has held up (even against some of the closest literary scrutiny there is) for generations. And if I can help pull a few new readers his way, that’s all the better.