Charles Dickens 
Sketches by Boz 

‘Sketches by Boz’ is a collection of short pieces published by Charles Dickens (under the pseudonym Boz) in 1836. 

The collection heralded an exciting new voice in English literature and it is Dickens first published book.



This richly varied collection of observation, fancy and fiction shows the London he knew so intimately at its best and worst – its streets, theatres, inns, pawnshops, law courts, prisons, omnibuses and the river Thames – in honest and visionary descriptions of everyday life and people. 



‘Sketches by Boz’ is a remarkable achievement, and looks towards Dickens’s giant novels in its profusion of characters, its glimpses of surreal modernity and its limitless fund of pathos and comic invention.