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

Sketches by ‘Boz, ‘ Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People is a collection of short pieces Charles Dickens originally published in various newspapers and other periodicals between 1833 and 1836. Charles Dickens’s first published book, Sketches by Boz is a funny and touching collection of observation, fancy and fiction showing the London he knew in all its complexity – its streets, theatres, inns, pawnshops, law courts, prisons and, of course, the river Thames. Dickens took the pseudonym from a nickname he had given his younger brother Augustus, whom he called ‘Moses’ after a character in Oliver Goldsmith’s the Vicar of Wakefield. This, ‘being facetiously pronounced through the nose, ‘ became ‘Boses’, which in turn was shortened to ‘Boz’.