Sketches By Boz.

DICKENS, Charles.

$2,000.00

Item Number: 130587

London: Chapman and Hall, 1839.

First edition of the new edition of one of Dickens’ collection of short pieces. Octavo, bound in full morocco by Bayntun-Riviere, gilt titles to the spine, raised bands, gilt medallion portrait of Dickens on the front panel, gilt signature on the back panel, inner dentelles, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, illustrated. In fine condition. An exceptional presentation.

The sketches of urban life that make up Sketches by Boz first appeared in a variety of London magazines. “What impressed his contemporaries as much as the vivacity of his style was the way in which he was able to chronicle the lives of ‘the people’ even at the time they were first struggling to find social and economic expression. This was how he found his great subject, in crowd scenes, in streets, in the lives of people who are uniquely tied together, for better or worse, and who are part of the city which rises like an hallucination through these early sketches” (Ackroyd, 169).