Sketches by “Boz”

work by Dickens

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Article History

Sketches by “Boz”, 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 magazines and newspapers periodicals. Subtitled “Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People,” Sketches contains Dickens’s 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.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.